Casey in wrong place at wrong time

Like many teenagers on their half-term holiday, Casey had planned to visit friends on the day she was killed, and her mother had agreed to let her catch the bus to Doncaster.

She was due to get off in the Hyde Park area of the town, where her friend Lucia Franco lived, but for some reason missed the stop and ended up leaving the bus closer to the town centre.

The quickest way back towards her friend’s house was through Elmfield Park, and as she made her way south, Bonser was walking in the other direction, armed with a knife.

Lucia, 14, who attended Doncaster’s McAuley Catholic High School with Casey, told how she had been waiting at home and started to get “really worried” when her friend did not arrive.

She said the pair had been messaging each other with their Blackberry mobile phones using the BBM service and said Casey was still messaging her after she got off the bus.

Lucia said Casey had told her she had missed her stop and added: “I was BBMing her saying where are you where are you. I said to her, don’t go through the park, but she didn’t message me back – we lost all contact.”

Casey’s friend said the last text she got from her friend was at around 1.12pm, which according to police was just minutes before the stabbing took place and Casey was found.

One of the passers-by who found her, Kerry Ann Berry, described how she had passed Bonser, just a few seconds before she noticed what turned out to be the victim on the grass.

“When I saw her I was looking at her because I thought it was a girl that my eldest lad used to go to school with,” she said.

“When she got really close I was focusing on her face, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

Mrs Berry later picked Bonser out as the woman she had seen in an identification parade.

Speaking about the moment she came across Casey, she said: “She was on the grass, not the path. At first I thought it was a pile of kids bags, because there were children playing nearby.

“I thought they had just dumped their bags, and I have gone over and all I can see is ginger hair and I realised that it was a girl.

“A mobile phone laid at the side of her, her right hand side. Another lady has come up at the same time, kids were playing on the play area, I asked the other lady, is it your little girl? She said no.”

Mrs Berry fought back tears as she said: “She was laid flat out, face down. The other lady phoned an ambulance. I turned her over with her back towards me and got her in the recovery position.

“Her hair was all over her face. I moved her hair back, she was foaming at the mouth, I thought she was fitting.”

Mrs Berry said the only blood she could she was on Casey’s fingers and added: “I thought she had hurt her fingers as she fell down. I was talking to her. The paramedics came – eventually.”

A statement from Casey’s mother, Kerry Day, read to the jury during the trial, related how she and her daughter had told each other “I love you” before she set out.

Mrs Day said she had warned Casey about crossing a dangerous road as she left and said the next thing she heard was later that afternoon when police contacted her to say she had collapsed.

Officers apparently asked if the teenager had any health problems, and asked the family to go to Doncaster Royal Infirmary, where Casey was taken after the attack.

Despite the efforts of medics there, Casey died eight hours after she was stabbed.

In her victim impact statement, Mrs Day said her daughter had her life “all mapped out” and had wanted to be a film producer.

Those dreams were shattered last Valentine’s Day and yesterday the grief of what had happened meant Mrs Day was unable to make any statement following Bonser’s sentence.