A MURDER, offences against children and a serious assault committed inside a school were among the crimes that shocked Furness in 2022.

The year saw criminals brought to justice by the courts, jailed or detained for serious crimes, protecting their victims and the wider community.

Casting a long shadow from 2022 will be the jailing of Barrow woman Laura Castle.

She was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 18 years for the murder of baby Leiland-James Corkill.  

Castle, then 38, was found guilty of murder and child cruelty by a jury following a two-week trial. 

She was in the process of adopting the child when he died as a result of significant brain injuries.

During the trial she admitted she shook the one-year-old child at her home in Eskdale Avenue on January 6 2021.

She pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the eve of the trial but had denied murder.

Also jailed this year was a woman who injected a child in her direct care with faeces.

Elizabeth Faragher lied about symptoms the child was experiencing to medical practitioners. 

The child received a large amount of unnecessary and intrusive medical investigation and treatment, including prescribed injections. 

Faragher also deliberately injected the child on five separate occasions with hypodermic needles contaminated with faeces.

In July, Faragher was sentenced to five years and ten months' imprisonment for one count of child cruelty and five counts of administering a noxious substance. 

Her sentence was then referred to the Court of Appeal under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme for being too low.

On 21 October 2022, the Court found Faragher’s original sentence to be unduly lenient and imposed a new sentence of eight years imprisonment.

Early in 2022, residents were shocked by the stabbing of a pupil at Walney School.

The 16-year-old perpetrator, who cannot be named for legal reasons, later appeared at Preston Crown Court after previously admitting to charges of wounding and possessing a blade on school premises.

He was sentenced to three years behind bars and told he must serve at least 18 months of this sentence.

A man who burgled houses and stole cars in a two-week crime spree was jailed nearly five years.

Reece Tarr committed eight offences during the fortnight of crime, targeting homes in Barrow.

The then-26-year-old also punched a man who disturbed him during an attempted burglary.

Tarr, of Barrow's Gloucester Street, previously pleaded guilty to eight offences and appeared before Preston Crown Court to be sentenced.

Tarr targeted homes on Fife Street, Devon Street and Middleton Avenue, Barrow, between July 12 and 23 last year.

A mother who exposed her children to living conditions a judge described as ‘wholly unsuitable for any child, or indeed, any human, to live in’ escaped a jail sentence this year.

The woman, in her 30s, from Ulverston, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty at South Cumbria Magistrates Court to three counts of assault, ill-treatment, neglect, and abandonment of a child, causing unnecessary suffering and injury.

The offences relate to an incident where police were called by concerned neighbours to a property in Ulverston.

She was handed an 18-month community order with a rehabilitation requirement of 30 days.