A man has been jailed for 17 years for the manslaughter of a nurse who died 11 days after being splashed with acid.
Xeneral Webster, 19, was arguing with another man in High Wycombe when he took out a bottle of acid which splashed Joanne Rand head-to-toe.
Ms Rand, 47, was sitting on a bench after visiting her daughter’s grave when the acid hit her on 3 June 2017.
Webster, of Westway, west London, had admitted manslaughter during his murder trial at Reading Crown Court.
Prosecutors said the case was the first acid killing in the UK.
Xeneral Webster, 19, retrieved the bottle of acid before fleeing the scene in a balaclava
The trial heard Ms Rand screamed in pain and ran to a nearby restaurant to douse herself with water after being splashed with the sulphuric acid.
The mother-of-three was treated in hospital and was discharged but died on 14 June last year from multi-organ failure after contracting septicaemia.
During the trial, prosecutor Alison Hunter QC said it “made no difference” Ms Rand was not the intended victim as Webster knew the consequences of having the chemical in public, having been the victim of an acid attack himself just months before.
Xeneral Webster had pleaded guilty to manslaughter during his trial for murder in April
Det Ch Insp Nick Glister, from Thames Valley Police, described Ms Rand as a “completely innocent party who was in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Her older sister, Lynn Ryan, described the past year as a “nightmare”.
“She was a very caring person, she wouldn’t want to harm anybody,” she said,
“When it [the acid injury] happened to her, she was shocked as to why.”
Source: www.bbc.com
