Brittany Karen Lorraine Crothall

Brittany Crothall, three, was killed on February 6, 1997 by a boarder who had been evicted from her family's Christchurch home. On Waitangi Day, February 6, 1997, Brittany was murdered as she slept at her Christchurch home. She would have turned 23 in August this year. Crothall remembers waking up with blood streaming down her face and Luke Sibley standing over her, holding a hammer and a knife. Sibley, a teenage boarder at Crothall's home, had been evicted after he acted inappropriately towards Brittany a day earlier. About 3.50am, he had entered the house through the toddler's bedroom window. Crothall fought off his attack before a neighbour who heard her screams arrived, and Sibley fled. "I was lying in the ambulance praying the whole time, 'please God, let Brittany be alive'." At hospital, Crothall was told her daughter was dead. She'd been suffocated and strangled. Sibley handed himself into police. He pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 13 years. Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/faces-of-innocents/79849658/faces-...