Girls found guilty of gang attacks

Two teenage girls were found guilty yesterday of taking part in gang attacks on a schoolmate who later killed herself.

Following the attacks in 1995, Katherine Jane Morrison, 16, was warned in February last year of a plan to beat her up again. The teenager, from Stornoway on Lewis, in the Western Isles, was found dead the next day. She had committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of prescription pills; a note she left for her parents said she could not face the girl thugs at the local school, the Nicolson Institute. At Stornoway Sheriff Court, two of her classmates, Michelle McBratney, 17, and Lee Ann Murray, 16, both of Stornoway, denied taking part in two attacks on 15 December 1995. McBratney also denied another charge of hitting Katherine, known as KJ, earlier that evening.