Devon's courts have been busy in the second half of 2024, jailing 81 defendants for serious crimes including murder, drug trafficking, and violent assaults. The longest sentence was handed to Cameron Davis, who received life with a minimum of 28 years for stabbing random stranger Lorna England in Exeter's Ludwell Valley Park.
Another high-profile case involved an international student who nearly killed two school friends in a hammer attack at Blundell's School in Tiverton. Drug gangs also featured prominently, with 13 men and women sentenced to a total of 27 years for supplying £1.5 million worth of Class A and B drugs from London into Devon and Cornwall.
Joshua Kettle, 29, from Newton Abbot, was jailed for an extended term of seven years and six months after stabbing a woman in the head with scissors and attacking others. Friends James Wilson and William Edward were jailed for a ferocious assault on a homeless transgender woman in Exeter city centre, leaving her with multiple facial fractures and bleeding on the brain.
In Brixham, police investigating a burglary uncovered a drug lab with 600g of cocaine. John Lawrence admitted letting drug suppliers use his mother's house to mix narcotics to pay off his own debt. Meanwhile, Paignton man Jamie Stevens was jailed after his grandparents found cocaine worth £22,000 in his room and reported him to police.
The year ended with a depraved paedophile sentenced to 21 years, but he died a few days later. Other cases included a public nuisance who claimed he was about to regenerate into the next Doctor Who, and numerous rapists and toxic boyfriends.
