OMG, this is awful! Never mix principles and really hard drugs and alcohol, y’all!
An Australian woman is going to prison after a horrifying attack on her “old friend.” Corbie Jean Walpole, 24, was having a house party at her home in Howlong, New South Wales last year when her pal Jake Loader, 23, made a sexist comment that caused her to snap. She has now admitted the whole thing as she pleaded guilty to an Albury District Court, per a shocking report from ABC — the Australian Broadcasting Corporation — earlier this month.
They were all drinking hard at the January 7 party. At 5 a.m. Jake issued a challenge to his female friend as they drank in her backyard — he told her if she couldn’t handle drinking with the boys, “she should stay in the kitchen making scones.” Yeah. Barf.
The thing is though, Corbie had already been drinking. A lot. She had been drinking for 12 hours already — and had somewhere between 23 and 35 drinks. The fact there’s that wide a margin in her estimate says a lot about her state of mind already. Plus, not only was she drunk, she admitted she had also done cocaine. Not a recipe for a chill night.
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Corbie also said later she “was feeling overwhelmed” by Jake and “didn’t know what to do,” as he antagonized her all night. He tried to wrestle her and woke up her sleeping boyfriend, the court heard. Corbie’s lawyer said this all “pushed her over the edge”:
“She simply had completely lost it.”
So when his sexist words set her off, she was in no state to make reasonable decisions — like to call him out or trade jabs or any choice other than radical violence.
What the inebriated 24-year-old did was douse her pal in flammable petrol and threaten him with a lighter. Jake, also drunk, gave her a final push, goading:
“Go on, do it.”
And she did. She set her friend on fire.
Their shocked friends tried to put him out. First they tried to smother the flames with a dog bed before someone thought to throw him in the pool. Corbie just stood there in shock. Witnesses heard her say over and over:
“What the f**k have I done? … He told me to do it.”
Jake survived the attack… but just barely. He was in a coma for eight days. He suffered burns over 55% of his body. He spent 74 days in a burn unit in Melbourne, during which time he required 10 operations. He can no longer go out in the sun, and he can’t regulate his own body temperature due to his sweat glands being burned off.
In his victim statement, he said:
“This attack did not only hurt me, it hurt everyone who cared about me.”
Corbie was stone cold sober in court. She told those gathered earlier this month:
“To this day I feel horrible, remorseful, guilty for what I have done to Jake, not only Jake but his family, his loved ones, his mutual friends … anyone who has been impacted in this entire case. I find it very hard to believe the injuries that were caused was from my doing. I would do anything to go back in time. No one deserves what happened to Jake and I can’t imagine the pain — both physically and emotionally — that I’ve caused him and his family.”
Corbie pleaded guilty to one count of burning or maiming by using corrosive fluid. She was sentenced this week to seven and a half years. Judge Jennifer English said before her ruling:
“This is a tragic case, in so many ways, for the victim and his family and the offender and her family: two young lives destroyed.”
Corbie says she has given up drugs and alcohol since the incident. She’ll be eligible for parole in 2029.
[Image via Corbie Jean Walpole/Instagram/GoFundMe.]
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