Woman jailed for killing four kids is 'broken' and has launched a bid to be freed from prison

The 20-year-old Courtney Brierley was arrested after she helped arsonists burn down a family home, killing four children in the process.

Brierley and her accomplices – her partner Zak Bolland and a friend, David Worrall – was charged with manslaughter earlier this year.

Read more on our Twitter account, @amomama_usa. Their petrol bomb attack in Walkden back in 2017 took the lives a 15-year-old girl and her siblings, aged, 8, 7, and 3.

Their 36-year-old mother, Michelle Pearson, was severely injured in the fire and is still battling for survival nearly a year later.

Brierly, who has been serving time at HMP Bronzefiled in Surrey, has since filed for an appeal and believes that she needs to be released from prison.

She was 19 years old at the time of the incident and was sentenced to more than two decades behind bars with the option of applying for parole after ten years.

Brierly claimed that she was pressurized into the attack out of fear of her violent boyfriend, believing he would physically hurt if she disobeyed his commands.

She also didn't realize at the time what Bolland's plans were, and simply followed his commands on that fateful night.

Bolland was sentenced to 40 years for murder and his friend Worsley, who threw the second petrol bomb, received a 37-year sentence.

It is believed that Brierly's motivation for filing the appeal is her mental state. One of her cellmates told Manchester Evening News:

"Courtney was very, very quiet, very broken. I didn't know what she'd done until after I'd left and I was horrified; you just would not have thought it of her."

Fellow inmates also described her "completely broken," and added that she was "in a very bad way." Another inmate added:

"She always looked like she’d been crying, was very, very quiet, didn’t make friends with anyone, rarely ate."