A mother jailed for 31 months for a social media post following the Southport murders has described how news of the massacre triggered memories of the death of her own child.
Lucy Connolly, a childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor, pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred last year after making the X post about migrants on July 29, the day of Axel Rudakubana's murders in Southport.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe tragically lost their lives at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club, which resulted in widespread riots around the country.
Connolly, who has a 12-year-old daughter, was interviewed by police on August 6 before being charged with inciting racial hatred on August 9.
Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months at Birmingham Crown Court for stirring up racial hatred on XNorthamptonshire Police
The 42-year-old, whose son died in tragic circumstances, wrote on X: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b******s for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government politicians with them.”
She added: “I feel physically sick knowing what these [Southport] families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”
Fewer than four hours later, Connolly, from Northampton, removed the post after it had been read 310,000 times.
Sentencing, Judge Melbourne Inman KC handed her a 31-month prison term and said she was "well aware how volatile the situation was" and had encouraged "activity which threatened or endangered life".
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Lucy Connolly has been imprisoned for 31 monthsGB NewsIn a statement online ahead of her appearance at the Court of Appeal, the FSU said Connolly would be appealing her sentence on the grounds that "the trial judge erred in assessing the offence's severity and failed to give sufficient weight to mitigating factors".
The childminder's legal team argue that her "emotional reaction to the events in Southport must be understood in light of her own bereavement: the death of her 19-month-old son following a hospital error, and the psychiatric difficulties that followed," the FSU adds.
During an appeal against her sentence at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday, she described how news of the Southport murders had triggered her anxiety caused when her baby son, Harry, died as the result of a hospital blunder 13 years earlier.
Her lawyer also urged the Court of Appeal to consider releasing her early for her family's sake.
Violent anti-immigration riots shook the country following the stabbing of three young girls in Southport GettyAdam King told the court: “A 12-year-old girl has been without her mother for something like a whole year.
"When you are 12 years old that is an enormous deterrent and the judge should have taken that into account with rather more weight than he did.”
She described feeling "really angry, really upset and really distressed" that the triple stabbing was allowed to happen but strongly denied any intent to encourage protestors to set fire to asylum hotels or murder any politicians.
She added that the murders made her worry about her children, causing a state of anxiety.
Connolly, who did accept that she had written the offending tweet, said she had understood that by pleading guilty she would get a lesser sentence, but claimed she had not realised that a guilty plea would also be admitting that she had intended to stir up violence, contributing to the riots.
