Teenager jailed for murder of teacher Ann Maguire

 

London (AFP) - A 16-year-old boy was jailed for life on Monday after he admitted murdering a teacher in front of a class full of pupils at a Catholic school in Leeds earlier this year.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stabbed 61-year-old Ann Maguire seven times at Corpus Christi Catholic College on April 28.

The boy pleaded guilty to murder at Leeds Crown Court where he was sentenced to life and ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years.

Judge Peter Coulson said the teenager showed a "total and chilling lack of remorse" over the killing and said the teenager's pride in what he had done was "truly grotesque".

The court heard earlier how the Spanish teacher was sitting at her desk helping a pupil when the boy attacked her from behind.

"The defendant approached his teacher and began to stab her in the neck and back," said prosecutor Paul Greaney QC.

He said the teacher was 5 feet 2 inches (1.6 metres) tall and of slim build while the teenager was "a full foot taller and was armed with a large kitchen knife".

"To describe his attack as cowardly hardly does it justice," he added.

Greaney said the boy had told other pupils earlier that day that he was going to attack Maguire and showed some of them the knives he had with him.

The prosecutor said he brought a bottle of whisky to school to celebrate afterwards.

The court heard how the teenager left a room next to where Maguire was teaching, winking at a fellow student before going to kill her.

He had indicated his intention to murder the teacher months before in a series of Facebook messages, according to the prosecution.

"Late on the night of Christmas Eve 2013 and into the early hours of Christmas Day, the defendant exchanged messages with a friend on Facebook," Greaney said.

"In those messages he spoke of 'brutally killing' Mrs Maguire and spending the rest of his life in jail so as not to have to worry about life or money."

A psychiatrist's report cited in court described how the pupil planned the murder.

Greaney, reading the boy's comments to the psychiatrist, said: "I decided on Sunday it was going to be a knife. I thought I was just going to go to school and wait for her lesson and do it.

"I wanted to get caught. That's why I did it in school. I wanted to be in jail."

Maguire, who died from multiple stab wounds, was only months from retirement.

The mother-of-two had taught at the school in the Halton Moor area of Leeds for more than 40 years.

It was thought to be the first time a teacher had been killed in a school since the 1996 Dunblane massacre and the first ever fatal stabbing of a teacher in a British school.