The girlfriend of Jake Rollinson, who was sitting in her car when 16-year-old Joseph Whitchurch was stabbed, broke down in court when told she would go to prison.
Lorna Richardson and Rollinson together cooked up a false account after Joseph was stabbed by Rollinson in the kitchen of his home on Saturday, December 26, 2020
Rollinson stabbed him four times - causing one wound to his neck consistent with a knife being held to his neck and pressed.
A wound to his leg could only have been caused when Joseph was facing away from Rollinson as it was in the back of his thigh. The fatal wound, delivered with a knife with a blade of slightly more than six inches, went straight into Joseph's chest, causing irreparable damage.
Former Nottingham College pupil Joseph died from his injuries on December 29, 2020.
Joseph's screams in the house did not bring Richardson, a hairdresser at the time, out of her car.
Judge Stuart Rafferty QC told 21-year-old Rollinson, of Hicklngs Lane, Stapleford, that must mean that he fetched Richardson to the scene.
It was Richardson who had dialled 999 and she was the first to say Joseph had been stabbed, and that he had run to the scene already injured, it was claimed.
Jurors heard at Rollinson's trial last year that when police and ambulance arrived, the defendant and his girlfriend, maintained an agreed false account and told police that they had both been sitting chatting in Richardson's car on the front drive of Rollinson's address.
Richardson, of Blake Road in Stapleford, could not go in the house because of Covid restrictions, Nottingham Crown Court had heard.
They said Joseph, who was Rollinson's friend, came running into the front garden and he was already injured, so Rollinson had helped him into the kitchen and called an ambulance.
Rollinson had identified himself to police as "Jake", and said "he (Joseph) has come running out in the garden" and he had pulled Joseph's trousers down, wrapped a towel around his leg and noticed on his chest he was bleeding.
Richardson was recorded saying her name for officers and then: "I didn't know what to do, the ambulance took so long. I tried to give him CPR".
Rollinson also said: "I dragged him into the house and laid him down."
One officer tells Rollinson: "Right, now your mate is fighting for his life. We need to know who it is. We need to go and arrest him and secure the evidence".
Rollinson replied: "I don't know who did it".
Rollinson was also recorded being arrested for the attempted murder of Joseph. He was heard shouting "Lorna, I'm being arrested for attempted murder."
Lorna said "Why?"
She was also arrested. At a police custody suite she was filmed saying: "I wasn't even there. I was in my car on my own. I just got out of the car. I don't know what happened. I wasn't there. I was in my car."
Judge Rafferty said to Rollinson: "For a long time you were hoping that all of this would go away and so was Lorna. She maintained the same lies as you and outside there you were brazening it out with police knowing in the kitchen was the injured boy."
Richardson, who pleaded guilty with Rollinson to perverting the course of justice, was jailed for two years, with the judge adding that her "misguided loyalty to Jake Rollinson persisted far longer than it should".
Rollinson was jailed for life at the same hearing for murdering Joseph and ordered to serve a minimum term of 19 years. He received a three-year concurrent sentence for perverting the course of justice.
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