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Teenage ‘Selfie Killers’ Who Battered Woman To Death And Uploaded Pictures To Snapchat Get 15 Years

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 03:37 PST, Apr 8, 2016

Two British teenage girls, both aged 15, who battered Angela Wrightson, 39, to death in her living room have been sentenced to 15 years in prison. The girls were handed life sentences with a mandatory sentence of 15 years, meaning they could both be free by their 30th birthdays.

As the Daily Mail reports, Wrightson had suffered over 54 blunt force injuries and 70 different slash wounds, an indication that she tried to fight for her life, which enraged her assailants.

The girls had spent over nine hours pummeling a frail Wrightson with a shovel, coffee table, computer printer, kettle, television set, and a wooden stick. The assailants took “a break” to pose for smiley selfies with their bruised victim in the background and sent it to their friends on Snapchat with a caption “nah xx.”

Surveillance cameras caught them leaving Wrightson’s home around 11 p.m. and returning at 2 a.m. to finish off what they started. The girls even called the police to give them a ride home around 4 a.m. after a taxi cab failed to show up. The police officer recalled that the girls were in high spirits. One of the girls took another selfie in the back of the police van and posted on Snapchat while Wrightson laid dead in her terraced home.

Both girls did not admit to murder charges. One admitted to manslaughter on the grounds of poor judgment and a weakened sense of responsibility. The other girl denied complicity over Wrightson’s injuries. Her attorney said she was too preoccupied with her mobile phone at the time the incident occurred and was not involved.

The girls cried when they were convicted of the gruesome murder Tuesday but were impassive when they were sentenced Thursday. One of the girls looked bored and was seen chewing on her fingernails while the other toyed with her hair and yawned repetitively.

Judge Justice Globe addressed the convicted girls.

“This is not a case of instantaneous death following a shot, stab or a blow; she pleaded for you to stop. This was a sustained attack over a long period of time, carried out with weapons in many different ways; she suffered mentally and physically before she lost consciousness and died. She kindly invited you in…you abused her hospitality and attacked her again and again.”

The judge revealed that he extended their prison sentence from 12 to 15 years because of the suffering they inflicted on the victim, noting that they would have faced harsher sentences if they were adults.

Surprisingly, the judge has refused to reveal the identity of the two girls, saying that one tried to commit suicide and the other was self-harming herself. He said one of the girls would have killed herself in court save for the quick intervention of a court official.

“Removing anonymity is likely to exacerbate what is already a dangerous situation,” he said.

Police have challenged the request, asserting that there are no benefits from disclosing the names of the girls who murdered a woman in cold blood.

During the trial that lasted two months, horrifying details emerged about the lives of the girls, who were drinking heavily and doing drugs by the time they were 11. They had also dropped out of school and frequently ran away from home. A neighbor said the girls were manageable if they were separated, but together they were devils.

Detective Chief Superintendent Peter McPhillips said in his 25 years of police work, he had never seen such a vicious murder committed by young people. Gerry Wareham of the Crown Prosecution Service said the killers were not bothered about the atrocity they had committed.

“In our society it is hard to imagine that two girls of such a young age could be capable of such violence.”

[Image via dennizen/Shutterstock]

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