A plan to kill a 16-year-old transgender girl was found in the bedroom of one of two other teenagers accused of her murder, a U.K. court was told Tuesday.
Brianna Ghey was stabbed 28 times in the head, neck, back and chest in a park in Warrington, northwest England, on Feb. 11 this year in a crime that drew international attention.
A boy and a girl, who were aged 15 at the time and cannot be named because they are under 18, were charged with her murder and went on trial Monday. Manchester Crown Court was told that the pair, now 16 and referred to in court as girl X and boy Y, discussed killing Ghey days and weeks beforehand.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer said girl X sent boy Y a photo of a handwritten note headed "Saturday 11th February 2023. Victim: Brianna Ghey" eight days before the killing.
The note was found in the girl's bedroom after she was arrested and laid out details to meet her co-defendant then go with Brianna to the park.
"I say code word to boy Y. He stabs her in the back as I stab her in the stomach. Boy Y drags the body into the area. We both cover up the area with logs etc.," it read.
Heer told the jury it was the prosecution's case that it was "clearly... a plan to kill Brianna Ghey".
On Feb. 11, a woman who called the emergency services reporting an attack said she had seen the attackers run away, the lawyer added.
DNA evidence from girl X and boy Y was found on drink bottles at the scene, and they were spotted together on dashcam footage, she told the court.
After their arrest the next day, police found the notes, while trainers and a jacket plus a hunting knife all with Brianna's bloodstains on them were discovered in the boy's bedroom.
The girl told police that Brianna had left them to meet a boy from Manchester, while the boy blamed the attack on his co-defendant, Heer said.
He answered "no comment" when asked about the knife.
Heer has said that each defendant "blames the other."
But it was the prosecution case that "whoever it was who delivered the fatal blow or blows, both defendants are equally guilty."
A GoFundMe crowd-funding page supporting Ghey's family has topped $140,000. A separate GoFundMe launched by Ghey's mother to benefit Mindfulness in Schools Project has raised over $30,000.
"The traumatic impact that this had on my family was so enormous, that I decided to help make a difference to our society to reduce the risk of this happening again to another young person," Esther Ghey wrote on the page.
Between October 2022 and September 2023, over 300 trans and gender-diverse people around the world were reported murdered, according to data compiled by nonprofit Transgender Europe.
A report released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign said that at least 33 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed in the last 12 months in the U.S. Earlier this year, the HRC declared a "state of emergency" for LGBTQ+ Americans for the first time in its 40-year history.
