A woman was sent to prison for setting her longtime friend on fire over a sexist remark.
“He was really pushing my buttons,” she said in court while defending her actions.
Corbie Jean Walpole appeared in court on Thursday, May 22, and was sentenced for torching her childhood friend, Jake Loader, and putting him in a coma.
“It’ll be OK, it’ll be OK,” the 25-year-old offender mouthed to her family after receiving her sentence.
Corbie Jean Walpole was handed a prison sentence for setting her childhood friend on fire
Corbie was convicted over an unexpected sequence of events that took place on January 7, 2024, while celebrating someone’s 21st birthday.
She was hosting her high school pal Jake at her Howlong home in Australia at the time.
Before their night took a horrific turn, Corbie and Jake had been drinking for hours and were out partying for much of the night.
Judge Jennifer English mentioned in court that Corbie had taken illicit substances and had been drinking since 5 p.m. on January 6, 2024.
They returned to Corbie’s home and continued drinking in the backyard until around 5 a.m.
Jake suffered third degree burns to 55% of his body and was in a coma for days
Corbie said in court that tensions were brewing throughout the party between her and Jake, who tried to wrestle with her and wake up her sleeping boyfriend.
She said he was provoking her the entire night and, at one point, told her to stay in the kitchen and make scones instead of drinking with the guys.
“[He] was antagonizing me. He told me to go to the kitchen where I belong because I’m a girl, I gave it back to him and called him a misogynist,” she said in court earlier this month.
Jake’s comments pushed Corbie to grab a five-liter container of fuel from her garage and pour it all over her high school friend.
“I’ll do it,” Corbie said as she waved a lighter around. “I’ll do it.”
“Go on, do it,” he unwittingly egged her on.
Corbie set her childhood friend ablaze after he asked her to stay in the kitchen where she belonged and make scones
Within seconds, Jake was engulfed in flames and ran around the yard, screaming as the fabric of his melted shirt stuck to his body.
Friends at the scene threw him into a pool to extinguish the fire.
“What the f*** have I done? He was telling me to do it,” Corbie said with her head in her hands.
During her sentencing this week, the judge said Corbie’s behavior “was an act of immediate, destructive and horrifically painful violence.”
The offender was sentenced to seven-and-a-half-years in prison and would spend a minimum of four-and-a-half-years behind bars.
Corbie will only be eligible for parole on November 11, 2029, the judge said.
A GoFundMe page was set up to support Jake on his road to recovery
Following the fire incident, Jake spent eight days in a coma and another 74 days in Prince Alfred Hospital’s burn unit in Melbourne.
He underwent 10 surgeries and can no longer expose his skin to the sun.
Moreover, his sweat glands were burned off during the incident, due to which his body cannot regulate his body temperature.
“This attack did not only hurt me, it hurt everyone who cared about me,” he said in his witness statement.
He used to herd cattle for his livelihood before the incident.
In addition to losing his source of income, he said his family was financially pressured from having to travel for his recovery.
The burn survivor said he lost his source of income and can no longer expose his skin to the sun
Corbie pleaded guilty to one charge of burning or maiming by using corrosive fluid last December.
“He was pushing my buttons… it was my intention to scare him,” she said in court earlier this year.
She sobbed in the witness stand and said she felt “horrible, remorseful [and] guilty” for what she did to Jake, his family, his loved ones, and mutual friends.
Following Corbie’s sentencing this week, netizens felt she “got what she deserved.”
“Looks like she doesn’t even care,” one said.
Another wrote, “She has destroyed that young man.”
Some women online twisted the narrative and sarcastically wrote victim-blaming comments that are normally targeted at females
One set of commenters twisted the narrative by mockingly blaming the victim.
The sarcastic remarks, mostly written by women, echoed some of the typical comments often made by men to victim-blame females in such extreme instances of violence.
“So why would he be at her house, he was clearly asking for it,” one wrote, while another sarcastically quipped, “Listen I KNOW fire and I just don’t think fire would do something like this.”
“What was he wearing though? Could’ve been something flammable and she just assumed he wanted to be set on fire,” said another.
Corbie, who gave up on alcohol and chemical substances following the incident, did not step out of her house for a month after the attack.
The court heard that she experiences nightmares and has a traumatic reaction whenever she smells fuel now.
“This is a tragic case in so many ways for the victim and his family and for the offender and her family,” Judge English said during the sentencing.
“[He] was antagonizing me. He told me to go to the kitchen where I belong because I’m a girl,” the convicted woman said in court
The judge said she felt it was “appropriate” to send Corbie to jail for her actions.
“It is never easy to send a young person, particularly a young woman, to jail,” she said on Thursday.
“But where appropriate it is something that must be done.”
“Should be jailed for 20 years,” one commenter said online about Corbie’s sentence
