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An inquest this week concluded that it couldn’t have been foreseen that Brianna Ghey’s killers would have plotted and carried out the murder
On the morning of February 11 last year, 16-year-old Brianna Ghey sat nervously doing her hair and make-up – anxious at the thought of having to get the bus to meet a friend. She had told her friend Amelia Loureiro that she was going to meet a girl called Scarlett Jenkinson – someone she had met at Birchwood High School – to take cocaine in a local park.
Brianna, a 16-year-old transgender girl, had recently started spending time with Jenkinson after the latter had moved to her school as part of a managed transfer from Culcheth High School following a disturbing incident where she had spiked a younger child. The two girls had likely first met in the school’s exclusion room – a space where disruptive children were able to work in a different learning environment to their peers.
From there they spoke on a number of occasions in the school’s “buddy room”, where children who “felt anxious about being out in the general crowds over break and lunch” could go. Both of the girls were anxious in different ways, with Jenkinson “quite withdrawn and quiet while Brianna was anxious, (but) displayed in a way that was quite loud like a defence mechanism”.
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However, the two girls’ interactions were seen as a positive thing, although it hadn’t been known by school staff that the pair had been socialising outside of school. Friends of Brianna reported seeing Jenkinson in the back of Snapchat videos, including one in the toilets of Asda where they dyed each other’s hair.
Apart from the nerves of having to get bus on her own, a task she tried to avoid due to fears of rude comments from strangers, the plan to meet Jenkinson and her drug dealer appeared to be normal for Brianna. Little did she know that Jenkinson – who had a fascination with serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and browsing the dark web – had compiled a “kill list” along with accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe.
After a plot on another school pupil failed, and Brianna failed to show up on a different day because she was unwell, the two then 15-year-olds carried out a “sadistic attack” after luring her to Culcheth Linear Park and stabbing her 28 times. This week an inquest held at Cheshire Coroners’ Court concluded that neither of the two schools could have foreseen the danger Brianna was in, nor could they have predicted what the two killers were capable of. As part of a weekly series looking back at the north west’s criminal history, the ECHO has taken a closer look at the events of February 11.
During the inquest’s proceedings, the court heard from Daisy Birkin – a friend of Brianna’s who met her when they were both pupils at King’s Leadership Academy. Daisy and Brianna met up on occasions to do makeup and go for food, but most of their friendship was spent online. Daisy said Brianna – who had thousands of followers on her social media platforms including TikTok, “used to want to be famous doing ‘getting ready with me videos’.
Daisy added: “She used to answer followers’ questions and I sat there and moderated the lives by deleting any mean comments before she could see them. She did them before school or on the weekend when she was getting ready for the day.” Daisy said the day before Brianna’s death they had spoken and the latter had said “she was going out with Scarlett and Scarlett’s drug dealer” before going to “meet up with her man”.
Another of Brianna’s friends, Amelia Loureiro, spoke to her the following morning. The pair had met on TikTok around three hours before Brianna died and were soon best friends speaking on Snapchat. Amelia said the pair supported each other during their transitions and, although they never met in person, had planned to live with each other in the future.
Brianna told Amelia that she was regularly called names by pupils at school but it had never amounted to threats. However, Amelia knew of Brianna’s friendship with Jenkinson and felt she was a bad influence due to her drug taking. Amelia said Brianna didn’t even like Jenkinson – she found her weird and was only friends with her because she could get her drugs, the court heard.
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Amelia told the inquest: “There was an incident when Scarlett gave Brianna ketamine. Brianna asked for cocaine but Scarlett gave her ketamine instead. Brianna said she was crying and her stomach was so painful. Brianna was sick all over the place. Her mum didn’t know about this, it was just me and Scarlett.
“The second incident was around two weeks before she was murdered. Brianna sent me a video showing some white circular pills on a snapbag and her swallowing one. She said Scarlett had given them to her and Brianna saying she had taken around 20 of them. Brianna said the pills had made her really sick. I don’t think these were MDMA and we had a brief conversation about if Scarlett was trying to poison her as I didn’t trust her.”
Amelia said on Saturday morning her and Brianna video called. Brianna was straightening her hair and doing her makeup, but was “nervous and stressed about getting the bus”. Amelia said: “I remember her asking me if she should go or not and I said it’s up to you but be safe.”
Around the same time as Brianna got dressed, Ratcliffe was being driven to Culcheth by his mum Alice Hemmings. She said her son normally went into Culcheth to play Pokémon Go and get food with a friend. When Ms Hemmings asked her son who he was meeting, he indicated he was meeting a male friend.
As she drove him from their home in Leigh, Ms Hemmings observed “he seemed a bit tense and moody which was not like him at all”. She said he wasn’t a generic moody teenager but in the lead up to the weekend had been checking his phone more often and was “particularly snappy with his brother”.
When she asked if he was meeting anyone else other than “his male friend” he gave her an ambiguous response. She added: “He wanted dropping at Sainsbury’s that day and I wanted to see his male friend to put my mind at ease, but I didn’t see him and told Eddie to phone or text with a timeframe to take him home. Eddie seemed in a bit of a rush to close the door but there was a car behind me.”
Brianna continued to message Amelia throughout the early afternoon. However, tired from the night before, Amelia had gone to sleep. When she woke up around 5pm she saw she had a message from Brianna that said “girl you are so annoying, call me xx”. This was followed by a voice note where Brianna said “girl why you so mean to me…I’m actually bare terrified girl like someone is going to rape me or something”.
While waiting for the bus Brianna was also speaking with her mum Esther. In an exchange of messages between the pair Brianna had said she was nervous while her mum encouraged her to go and meet with Jenkinson. Rachel Powell, the mum of Esther’s partner, said she saw Brianna walking down Warrington Road in Culcheth at around 2pm.
She said: “I was approaching the roundabout and noticed Brianna walking on the path with two other people. The three of them were walking from the direction of Sainsbury’s car park. She was wearing a white fluffy coat. Person one, a white female with shoulder length dark hair, was around the same age. I can’t tell any other details about her.
“Person two I can’t recall if they were male or female. I only saw Brianna for a couple of seconds. They appeared to be normal teenagers walking in the street together. There was nothing that concerned me.” Around half an hour later informant Megan Milne recognised Jenkinson walking with two other people. She recalled seeing Brianna – observing her “distinctive ginger coloured hair and a slim build” with a “very defined face”.
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She added: “As Scarlett and the male walked past me they didn’t make eye contact, while the other female made eye contact and smiled. I simply formed the opinion they were three friends.” Shortly after 3pm Kathryn and Andrew Vize were walking their dogs when they saw two people, now confirmed to be Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, running across a path to a farmer’s field.
When they got closer they saw the unconscious body of a girl. The criminal trial heard Mrs Vize called 999 and said: “Am on Culcheth Linear Park and somebody has been attacked. We’ve seen the attackers run away. I think they are the attackers. They’ve run away from the body.”
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PC Andrew Chadwick, a specialist firearms officer, was close to the scene and arrived soon after. He told the court that when he found Brianna he observed “heavily bloodstained clothing” and proceeded to check for a pulse. He exposed Brianna’s body and “saw numerous stab wounds to her chest and side areas”. He said he continued to perform CPR before assisting paramedics.
Paramedic Deborah Simpson said: “I could not prepare for what I was about to witness. I have never experienced such traumatic injuries, this is the worst I have ever experienced.” After not hearing a response from Brianna, Amelia messaged “girl are you okay” and followed it with “girl you better not be dead, I am praying for you”. She later saw on the news that a 16-year-old girl called Brianna Ghey had been stabbed to death in the park.
Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were arrested on February 13 at their homes. Jenkinson said “how come I am a suspect, is it because I was the last one to see her alive?” while Ratcliffe said “I can explain”. After an extensive trial at Manchester Crown Court the two teen killers were sentenced to life terms in prison, with Jenkinson serving a minimum of 22 years and Ratcliffe at least 20 years.
However, the inquest this week focused on whether the risk to Brianna could have been foreseen, and if the “managed transfer” of Jenkinson from Culcheth High School to Birchwood Community High School was an appropriate move given her past behaviour. The inquest looked at Jenkinson spiking a younger pupil with a cannabis edible.
It also detailed a decline in Jenkinson as she went from a diligent pupil whose attendance was good, to a teenager who turned up to school under the influence, assaulted a pupil and racially abused another. Following the inquest, where at times evidence was given via an agreed facts document presented by legal representatives from both schools and the council, Cheshire’s senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish gave a conclusion of unlawful killing contributed to by multiple stab wounds.
Ms Devonish found the managed transfer between the two schools was appropriately managed and did not contribute to her death, nor could the two schools “reasonably foreseen that Scarlett Jenkinson or Eddie Ratcliffe would have plotted and murdered Brianna”.
She finished: “There was no evidence of gaps in partnership working between the schools and other agencies and it could not, on the evidence available at the time, have been reasonably foreseen that Scarlett Jenkinson was mentally unstable such that she would kill.”
You can read back at everything heard during the three days here.
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