Five men are accused of murdering Knowsley Council worker shot dead aged 28 in her own home
James Witham, of Ashbury Road in Huyton, 28-year-old Sean Zeisz, of Longreach Road in Huyton, 26-year-old Niall Barry, of Moscow Drive in Tuebrook, 29-year-old Joseph Peers, of Woodlands Road in Roby, and 28-year-old Ian Fitzgibbon, of Heigham Gardens in St Helens, have pleaded not guilty to murdering the Knowsley Council worker, conspiracy to murder her boyfriend Lee Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, namely a Skorpion submachine gun, and ammunition with intent to endanger...
Mr Greaney asked what had been robbed and Zeisz said drugs, specifically a kilo and a half of cocaine. He said a kilo of cocaine was being sold for around £24,000 at the time. These texts showed discussions of the sale of weapons including Skorpion sub-machine guns, referred to as "Skorps", and other fully automatic firearms. Mr Greaney suggested: "It rather looks like Niall Barry had access to automatic firearms, and you knew that didn’t you?”Mr Greaney said: “I’m going to ask you to have one more think about that.
"All of that had happened in front of your girlfriend. My question is, were you embarrassed that Liv had seen you run away from a fight?"Mr Greaney then referred to a text message Ashley had sent to a friend before her death, in which she said: "Zest got smacked Saturday and again last night by all Joker and that. Dusty hit him too.
Mr Greaney told the court that "things badly deteriorated" after Glastonbury and played a voice note in which Ashley described the fallout to her friend Sophie on August 6, including references to "Branch" - the nickname of co-defendant Niall Barry. She said in this message: "Obviously like Wally and that don't like Branch.
"I don't normally wanna know, but you've half got to prepare me for the worst. I need to know what could happen. "Five minutes later, Zest popped up with a fire extinguisher in his arms. Then Ian's popped up from nowhere, and Lee was with them. "If Liv wouldn't have went and legged Sean and went and seen Dusty, this murder wouldn't have happened. Liv going and seeing Dusty has brought all this on.
"Now Branch is on his high horse and now Lee's got dragged back into it. But if she wouldn't have split up with Zest and went and seen Dusty, I don't reckon any of this would have happened, and I don't reckon Lee would have had that further murder with Branch on the phone either, the other day. "She told me it was innocent, he was 10 years younger. This is on the Monday, when we’ve come out of the festival."Zeisz: "I seen them on the Sunday and spoke to the lads who hit me. It was all done, forgotten about."
"Dusty was friends with Lee Harrison. All of that reignited that feud between the two men, and you were part of it."He was also asked about events on the evening of August 20 2022. Zeisz reported that he had been invited to a flat on Pilch Lane in Huyton, described by the prosecution as the "centre of operations for the plotters on the night", by Peers to watch a boxing match between Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk.
"We were staying up until 3, so we would have needed more ciggies. If he says it’s shut, I’ll believe him, he’s living there." "The fight was starting in three minutes. I knew they were together, they went out together, didn't they? "You encouraged an attack on Leinster Road, intending that no one be left behind. You fully supported the use of a machine gun to that end."
Ms Jones said her son would regularly come for his Sunday dinner, and there was nothing unusual about that day. However she said she remembered the date as they had discussed her nephew's upcoming wedding in Ibiza, and Zeisz had complained that he did not like the shoes he had been asked to wear as an usher.
Ms Jones said: “He was a lot quieter, but we were discussing about these shoes. He didn’t want to wear the shoes, that’s why I thought he was quieter, I was talking him into it.” He told the jury: "I said 'I need to see you, I need to speak to you, it’s important'. We were gonna lock in the car and take him the police station.”
Mr Greaney said: “As you made that drugs deal and tucked into your Sunday lunch you weren’t heartbroken.”The prosecutor suggested: “Because you were part of the plot to kill Lee Harrison, killing anyone who got in the way of that plan."Barry, began giving evidence to the jury. His counsel, Stanley Reiz KC, asked him about his conviction for firearms offences and his activities on EncroChat, where he used the handle "BetterTrunk", during 2020.
"There were a lot of people who could get anything. I was offered drugs every day by different people, different prices." Barry was then asked about a series of calls between himself, Witham and Harrison on July 26 last year. At around 4.45pm, Witham made three calls to Harrison before Barry spoke to Witham "a few minutes later" for five minutes and 25 seconds."He said he’d just been arguing with Lee. He said he was arguing with him over drugs and money what have been robbed and another bit of money, Lee said it was to do with me.
"He said he didn’t mention my name, saying I had anything to do with it. It was a misunderstanding, it wasn’t anything like that.Mr Reiz asked: "How were you saying that to him?" Barry told the jury that, on the night of the shooting, he had been "chilling" in the flat, which he was renting from Kershaw, and had been "absolutely f*****" from spending hours harvesting cannabis leaves from a crop he had been growing in one of the bedrooms. He said he planned to watch the Anthony Joshua vs Oleksandr Usyk boxing fight with "the lads", which included Witham.
However the jury heard the pair returned after 1am that morning, which he was not expecting. By then in the flat was Peers, Witham, Barry, Zeisz and Kershaw. "I said why the f*** have you done this, what the f*** are you doing coming back here. I didn’t want to involve myself in something like that. Barry said at that point he did not realise anyone had been hurt. He said: "He told me he shot the house up.
"Just to distance myself from the whole situation to be honest. He was just going to get me out the country. Barry said this meant that he would be picked up "in the Midlands or down south". Gus then told him: "Sound.Barry said of this: "I was leaving the country. I think it means France or Amsterdam, I was planning on going to Europe."
Barry said he was "lying on the bed" when officers attended their room shortly before 11pm while his girlfriend, Lucy Worley, was "standing up by the telly". He was then arrested on suspicion of murder, telling the court: "I was just in shock to be honest."Barry said: "I had an idea, yeah. I thought it was about the murder of Ashley, cos I’d been in that car, that was the first thing I thought in my head.
Mr Reiz concluded his questioning by asking: "When James Witham left 267 Pilch Lane at 10.10pm on August 20, did you know he was going to go on to discharge a firearm at 40 Leinster Road?"Barry: "No. I did not. "I’d always got on with Ashley and she was a lovely girl. I would never condone going to someone’s house.
Barry: "No, I’ve never looked for him in my life. I went to Glastonbury to have a good time, not to look at people."Barry: "I can remember comments getting made. But I can’t remember them being to Ian or anything like that.”Mr Cooper: "We suggest you showed Ian Fitzgibbon a knife that you had in your right hand.
Barry: “I wouldn’t tell someone to tell someone I was going to stab them up. You wouldn't give someone the heads up if you were going to do something to them, t just wouldn’t happen." Barry replied: "I just know it was someone from round there. I just knew it was a certain few people who it could have been, just people off Hillside."
Barry agreed, saying "no, you can't". Mr Greaney added: "Where someone disrespects you and steals your drugs, you need to deal with it in a different way."Mr Greaney said: "If people discover you’re a soft touch who can be stolen from and won’t react, that’s hardly good for business. There are people who will steal from you as readily as saying hello.
Barry replied: "No, that’s not the truth. I’m not the leader of no organised crime group, I had no authority to send anyone to anyone’s house and I didn’t." Barry was also pressed over a text message, sent by Ashley Dale to a friend on July 3, which referred to Barry and Lee Harrison dealing drugs together before their fall out. It read: "Branch had been bumping Lee for ages, saying he owed so much when he was putting stuff in, the work.
"I may have answered it when James was busy, that’s my link to that phone. I used to sell drugs in similar areas, Holywell, Bangor."
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