Jail for girls who tortured woman to death

Two teenage girls subjected a 39-year-old woman to “gratuitous degradation” as they battered her to death in her home, according to a judge who sentenced them to an indefinite term in prison with aminimum of 15 years.

The pair were 13 and 14 when they murdered Angela Wrightson in the lounge of her home in Hartlepool, County Durham, in December 2014, using weapons that included a shovel, a TV, a coffee table, and a stick studded with screws during a five-hour long ordeal.

A judge at Leeds Crown Court recounted how Ms Wrightson suffered an “absolute minimum of 70 separate slash injuries and 54 separate blunt-force injuries — 71 were to the head and face, 31 were to the body, 22 were deflection injuries to the back of her hands, wrists, and arms as she tried to ward off the blows”.