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, 28-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...
Giving evidence, Detective Constable Lauren Hunter said this referred to his girlfriend’s car being parked on the path of Jordan Thompson’s home. He added: "Go smash the window screen now. Are you by ours? Please bro. Smash her car up." "What going on here ladddd. Jamie stabbed all the tyres before for me. I want it smashing up bro please. Fly there now while they asleep. Smash window screen bro."
She said to one friend, named as Mol,: "Proper stressed in rs all the time. Me nerves are gone when am out in the car with Lee just feeling like I'm looking over my shoulder all the time." According to Ashley, her boyfriend wanted to end the feud with Barry. She told Sophie: “I know Lee doesn’t want this. Lee said to me if Branch came to me and said let’s squash it I would squash it, I don’t want all this murder…He’s not worth this, he’s not worth me ending up in jail or ending up wherever, I don’t want this.”
The court heard that Ms Dale and Barry both attended the wake on August 10, but Mr Harrison did not. Messages Ashley sent to friends in a WhatsApp group on August 12 were shown to the jury, in which she discussed another friend who had been with Barry.Another friend, Lydia, said: “Dan said a few of the lads got there and got straight off.”
The prosecution played clips showing the movements of the five men accused of murder between August 19 and August 20. The jury heard Barry, Witham, Peers, and an associate called David McCaig travelled to Abergele in North Wales on the afternoon of August 19, driving in the grey Hyundai i30n car recorded at the scene of the shooting.
Witham then went to watch Everton vs Nottingham Forest, with a transaction recorded in his name at 2.27pm at Willow Catering, a food provider near the stadium. The officer replied: "He is wearing the trainers he purchased earlier in the day from Taskers, the On Cloudflyer trainers." The jury saw CCTV of a grey Hyundai i30n car travelling towards the crime scene on two occasions, the first at 11.36pm on Saturday August 20. The prosecution case is that Witham, jointly with Peers, slashed three tyres on Ashley's white Volkswagen T-Roc car parked outside her home.Six minutes later she sent a WhatsApp message to her mum, Julie Dale, saying: “The rain just set my car alarm off x”.
The jury heard that was her last contact with her mum. Ms Dale and other members of her family were seen in tears in the public gallery as the messages were read out by DS Sutton. The jury heard that at 12.37am, a Ring doorbell camera on a property opposite Ashley’s home activated, showing that by that point the front door had been kicked through. Mr Langhorn said the camera was only activated by movement up to the front gate of the house it was installed on, and had not recorded Witham entering the house or the movements of the Hyundai.
She told the jury: "I went to the back door because I thought I heard someone say in a very soft, faint, voice ‘help me, help me’. It was directly after the crash." The jury also heard from another neighbour who cannot be named, Neighbour A, who said she heard what sounded like a "drilling noise" before hearing two screams. The second "really loud" scream, she said, included the words: "Get the f*** out".
It was only after he saw her gunshot wound that he noticed a number of bullet casings within the property. PC Sinnott added: "I believed it may have been a stab wound or a puncture wound from a bullet."Within the dining room, there were bullet holes on the wall and the ceiling. Then I’ve noticed the dog in the corner, and an electric bike as well."
Another bullet found in a barstool is believed to have been the bullet which struck Ashley, with damage to the chair being found at the same height as the exit wound to her back. Mr Horne told the jury that the gunshots in the kitchen had been fired in the "same direction", "more or less in the direction of the doorway", and added: "I would favour the proposition that they were perhaps fired at a target as opposed to just randomly.
Witham then visited the Everton Two club shop, where he spent £129.70 on his bank card. The dad and son later went to Zizzi, where he appeared to change into his new shoes. But the booking was unsuccessful as his Visa card was declined when used to make the £107.10 payment. Both men were then said to have travelled back to Merseyside in an Audi Q7, arriving at around 6pm - 45 minutes after police had raided Witham's home on Ashbury Road in Huyton.
Witham was then said to have returned to Scotland in the Audi Q7 on August 27, as evidenced by ANPR and cell siting data. Two days later, Peers used his co-defendant's bank card to make a £250 withdrawal at the Post Office on Childwall Lane - followed by two further similar transactions, amounting to £250 and £150, on August 31.
Witham, who had been seated in the rear, meanwhile gave officers a false name of "Francis Kelly" and continued to take drags from his cigarette after being handcuffed. When told why he was being detained, he shook his head and puffed out his cheeks.
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