FAMILY and friends of a murdered schoolgirl are waiting anxiously to hear if her killer’s sentence will be appealed.

Liberty Templeman was beaten unconscious, strangled, and then dragged and left face down in a stream in New Zealand in 2008.

The popular 15-year-old had emigrated, with her family, from Bright-lingsea three years earlier in search of a better life.

There was outrage around the world when her murderer, who was 14 when he brutally killed her, was sentenced to just 11 years for her killing, and an additional six months for indecently assaulting her.

At the time, her devastated parents, Rebecca and Andrew, and younger brother Billy called the sentence “farcical”, and said it showed a lack of respect for Liberty and her grieving family.

Libby’s grandmothers, Monica Hempstead, from Bright-lingsea, and Gill Templeman, from Stanway, added their voices to a campaign calling for the sentencing laws to be tightened.

An online petition has received almost 1,100 signatures, and paper versions being taken around the two towns are believed to have received several hundred signatures.

It has now emerged the prosecutor in the case, Mike Smith, has written to New Zealand’s Solicitor General asking for a possible appeal against Hermanus Theodorus Kriel’s jail term.

The appeal request is now being examined by the Solicitor General. He normally grants appeals in cases where the sentence is seen to be “manifestly inadequate”.

Libby’s paternal grandmother, Gill Templeman, welcomed the move.

“This is good news,” she insisted, “and is a move in the right direction. It would be wonderful if the sentence could be extended, for Liberty and for other people not to have to go through the agony Libby’s parents are going through.”

A decision on the appeal is expected within a week.