Posing for a year group photo, dressed smartly in her uniform and gazing innocently at the camera, this brown-haired school girl looks like any other.
But fast forward five years and Alice Wood was sat in a police interview room being quizzed over the murder of her boyfriend.
The 23-year-old went from a high-flying student who had just been offered a place on a postgraduate course at Cambridge University, to a young woman facing life in prison, in just five years.
Wood drove at her fiancé Ryan Watson three times after she resented him speaking to another woman at a party in Stoke in May 2022, dragging him almost a tenth of a mile along a road beneath her car.
The actions of Wood, who will be sentenced on January 29 after being convicted of murder earlier this week, have shocked neighbours and old school friends.
Friends recalled her being ‘quiet’ and not quick to anger growing up, referring to her as a ‘school swot’. She even had her exemplary grades tattooed on her arm.
Alice Wood (pictured) in her school uniform aged 16. She now faces life in prison
Bodyworn camera footage released by Cheshire Police shows Wood sobbing as she was arrested on suspicion of murder
Wood, who had been drinking, got behind the wheel of her car and drove into her boyfriend in what horrified neighbours described as a ‘game of chicken’.
Ryan Watson (pictured) was dragged more than 500ft along the road underneath his fiancé’s car
Alice Wood is warned she faces a life sentence after mowing down her boyfriend Ryan Watson in a jealous rage
The pair had been enjoying each other’s company at the party before she grew jealous at him receiving attention from another woman
Knocking on the door of a neighbour’s home, she said: ‘I think I’ve run over my boyfriend. And as police arrived with handcuffs she sobbed: ‘It’s fine, I deserve it.’
A former school friend told the Mirror that Wood had been bound for bigger things before she mowed down Mr Watson, leaving the family of the charity worker ‘heartbroken’.
The ex-pal said: ‘Alice never showed any signs of jealousy, anger or aggression and wasn’t the type of person you had to be careful around. I think that’s why it came as such a shock.
‘Speaking to everyone who knew her the general consensus is this is unexpected. She was really smart, like effortlessly so.
‘In the first year of secondary she was selected for the gifted and talented group, got three A-stars at A-level and was one of only a few pupils in the school’s history to get to the final selection stage for Oxford.’
Wood and Mr Watson had bought a house together in Rode Heath, Cheshire, in October 2021 for £120,000 with help from their parents, seven months before she made the fateful decision to get behind the wheel of her Ford Fiesta.
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