A teenage girl accused of killing Brianna Ghey cried as she described seeing her co-defendant stab Brianna “around five times” in a Warrington park before they both ran away from the scene.
Giving evidence at Manchester crown court on Monday, the girl admitted that killing Brianna was her idea, and that she had handwritten a murder plan – but insisted it was “just fantasy”.
She said she invited Brianna to Culcheth Linear Park on 11 February on the pretence of taking drugs, and then used a fake Snapchat profile of a “dealer” called Nathan to pretend to arrange the deal.
She said she was “in shock” after hearing a scream and turning around to see her co-accused – a 16-year-old boy known as Y – stabbing Brianna.
Both X and Y, aged 15 at the time, now both 16, deny murder. Both are blaming each other for Brianna’s death. Neither can be named due to their age.
The jury has previously watched X’s first police interview, where she claimed that Brianna had “gone off with a lad from Manchester”.
Questioned by her barrister, Richard Pratt KC, she admitted that was a lie “to defend myself and Boy Y” – but insisted that Brianna had discussed meeting a boy on the day she was killed.
The court has heard that Girl X invited Brianna to meet her and Boy Y by saying she planned to get “shitfaced and high as fuck”. She and Brianna had previously taken cocaine together, she told the jury on Monday, but she did not in reality have any drugs on the day of the killing.
Asked by Boy Y’s barrister, Richard Littler KC, why she told Brianna to only buy a single bus ticket to meet the teenagers on the day of the murder, the girl said she did not know.
She said she and Y met Brianna off the bus and went to Linear Park, and that after texting Nathan, the imaginary drug dealer she had created on Snapchat, she wandered away to “stretch my legs”.
She said: “When I walked off, I heard a noise like someone screaming and that’s when I turned around.”
Pratt asked her: “What did you see when you turned around?”
Girl X replied: “I saw Boy Y stabbing Brianna.”
She said she did not stop him “because there was nothing I could do. If I tried to step in he could easily have overpowered me.”
She described following the boy when he ran away through some fields, before the boy dropped Brianna’s phone into a drain, and said they did not talk about what had happened. “I was too much in shock to even try to talk to him, I was scared that he could possibly come after me,” she told the jury, starting to cry.
Brianna was knifed 28 times in her head, neck, chest and back with a hunting knife Y bought on a skiing trip to Bulgaria six weeks earlier, the court has heard.
Asked how many times she saw Y stabbing Brianna, Girl X replied: “Around five times. I saw her fall and land face down on the floor. I saw him stood next to her, leaning over, looking down at her.”
Pratt asked: “How did this make you feel?”
Girl X said: “I was in shock.”
A few weeks before Brianna was killed, X and Y discussed murdering a boy called E, who Y had called a “nonce”. Messages exchanged between the two showed the defendants discussing hanging E in Culcheth Linear Park, with X asking Y if he had any rope.
Giving evidence on Monday, X insisted she encouraged Y to buy rope because she wanted to hang herself rather than E. “I started getting suicidal thoughts,” she told the jury, but “didn’t have money to buy rope”.
The girl was asked about messages she sent to Y two weeks before Brianna’s killing, saying: “If we can’t get E tomorrow we can kill Brianna … Let’s stab her. Original E plan. Back and throat.”
Littler put it to X that “it was your idea” to kill Brianna, and she said “yes”.
The jury heard X wrote Y another message, saying of Brianna: “I want to stab her at least once even if she’s dead jus coz its fun lol.”
Littler asked her: “In your mind, is that sort of thing fun?”
She replied: “Yes.”
Cross-examined by Littler, Girl X said she had argued with Brianna in the December before she was killed. “I had a couple of arguments with her over her sleeping with grown men,” the girl said, insisting there was no big “falling out” and that they remained friends.
After his arrest, Boy Y told police that he saw Girl X stab Brianna. He said he asked why she had done it, and claimed Girl X said Brianna tried to break her and her boyfriend up.
The trial continues.
