Two young lives changed forever after a woman set her childhood friend on fire for his sexist remark.
“He was antagonizing me,” Corbie Jean Walpole said in court in Australia when she tried to justify why she torched her buddy Jake Loader in a horrifying drunken act.
She is now making an appeal against the length of her sentence.
Corbie Walpole set her high school friend Jake Loader on fire after a drunken night spiraled into violence
Highlights
- Corbie Walpole set her high school friend ablaze after a night of drinking spiraled into violence.
- The victim, Jake Loader, was left in a coma and needed 10 surgeries after the incident.
- Corbie said she torched him because he was “pushing” her buttons and made a misogynist comment.
- “He was antagonizing me,” she claimed in court.
Image credits: corbie.walpole
The Australian woman, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of burning, maiming, disfiguring or disabling a person by use of a corrosive fluid.
She was given a sentence to seven-and-a-half-years in prison and would spend a minimum of four-and-a-half-years behind bars.
The convicted friend is now challenging the severity of her sentence. She submitted a notice of intention to appeal with the Court of Criminal Appeal on June 13.
Image credits: Jake Loader
The torching incident took place in January 2024, back when Corbie was 23 years old and Jake was 22.
The convicted electrician was hosting her high school pal at her Howlong home when they began drinking from around 5 p.m. on January 6, 2024.
The convicted woman admitted to heavy drinking for hours and even used illicit substances
Image credits: ABC Goulburn Murray: Philippe Perez
The friends drank for hours and were out partying for much of the night with their other pals.
Corbie had also taken illicit substances, in addition to downing bottles of cider and other alcoholic drinks.
It was estimated by an expert that she may have had about 23 to 35 standard drinks in the span of 12 hours and had just two slices of pizza to eat in that time.
Her blood alcohol level must have been between 0.22 and 0.38, the expert reportedly said.
Image credits: 7NEWS Border
During the night, they attended a friend’s 21st birthday celebration before finally returning to Corbie’s home at around 4 a.m.
Corbie’s boyfriend was asleep at the time, while the friends settled into her backyard and continued drinking.
Although they were partying together, Corbie said in court that tensions were brewing between her and Jake, who tried to wrestle with her and wake up her sleeping boyfriend.
She said he was provoking her the entire night and, when they were in the backyard, he told her to stay in the kitchen and make scones instead of drinking with the guys.
Corbie claimed Jake provoked her with sexist comments, telling her to “go to the kitchen where [she] belongs”
Image credits: Jake Loader
“[He] was antagonizing me. He told me to go to the kitchen where I belong because I’m a girl, I gave it back to him and called him a misogynist,” she said in court last month.
When her friend allegedly made the sexist comment, an enraged Corbie grabbed a container of fuel from her garage and poured it all over Jake as he sat on a chair in her backyard.
“I’ll do it,” Corbie then said, waving a lighter around and threatening to set her high school friend on fire. “I’ll do it.”
Jake unwittingly egged her on, saying, “Go on, do it.”
Image credits: ABC Goulburn Murray: Philippe Perez
To everyone’s surprise, Jake was engulfed in flames within seconds, and he ran around the yard screaming.
The fabric of his melted shirt had stuck to his body, and friends had to throw him into a pool to extinguish the fire.
“What the f*** have I done? He was telling me to do it,” Corbie said with her head in her hands.
The incident led to Jake spending eight days in a coma and another 74 days in Prince Alfred Hospital’s burn unit in Melbourne.
The victim underwent 10 surgeries and can no longer expose his skin to the sun, thus affecting his livelihood of mustering cattle in Queensland.
The burns also affected his sweat glands, which in turn means he cannot regulate his body temperature.
The high school friend suffered critical burns, spent eight days in a coma, and underwent 10 surgeries
Image credits: GoFundMe
“This attack did not only hurt me, it hurt everyone who cared about me,” he said in his witness statement read out in court.
Corbie took the stand earlier this year and sobbed as she said she felt “horrible, remorseful [and] guilty” for her actions.
“He was pushing my buttons… it was my intention to scare him,” she claimed.
Judge Jennifer English, who handed Corbie her sentence on May 22, rejected the claim that Corbie was “challenged and disrespected in her own home.”
“I find that the assault upon the victim was unprovoked,” the judge added.
Image credits: corbie.walpole
Corbie is now appealing for a shorter sentence and had initially hoped to receive some form of non-custodial punishment for the violent crime.
But she was put away for four and half years and a maximum of seven years and six months. She faced a maximum of 25 years for setting her friend on fire.
During her sentencing, Judge English believed her actions called for nothing short of full-time custody, even though she appeared to have good prospects of rehabilitation and was deemed highly unlikely to re-offend.
“Someone will do the same to her in jail,” one commented online
