Five men are accused of murdering the council worker who was shot dead, aged 28, in her own home
The trial of five men accused of murder over the fatal shooting of Ashley Dale has continued for a second week.
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.”
At 6.47pm that evening, CCTV showed the men return to the flat in Pilch Lane. Detective Sergeant Graeme Sutton, under questioning from Alex Langhorn, junior counsel for the prosecution, told the jury Barry did not emerge again until after the shooting. Later that evening, shortly before 6pm, Fitzgibbon and Peers are seen buying sweets and a pay-as-you-go top up at a Go Local store on Pilch Lane near the flat. DS Sutton said a new Nokia phone, attributed to Barry, activated a short time later for the first time.
Meanwhile, at around 8.25pm, a delivery driver in a taxi pulled upside the flat in Pilch Lane, carrying bags of what appear to be takeaway food. Fitzgibbon is also recorded leaving the flat and entering Chan's Fish and Chip Shop at 8.32pm. Ashley also sent a message to her friend Lois with a selfie showing her holding her Dachshund dog. The message read: "Any need for my child” with a crying laughing emoji.
The jury heard at one minute past midnight on Sunday, August 21, Harrison replied to Ashley saying: "Hahahah you think you're in a horror movie". He then followed up with "Are you ok? Alive?"At 12.30am, CCTV shows the Hyundai turning into Leinster Road. Witham accepts being in the vehicle, but the prosecution contend Peers was also inside.
Mr Langhorn told the jury a 999 call, made by a man living behind Ashley's home, Colin Morris, described Ashley lying in her back yard "groaning". Police attended the property, and body-worn footage showed officers making their way through the house, noticing bullet holes on the wall. Mr Greaney asked her: “There’s the crash and you hear someone saying help me help me. When you heard the person saying help me help me, were you able to say whether that was a female or male voice?”Another witness who cannot be named, Neighbour C, described hearing a loud bang which she initially thought may have been a wheelie bin lid being slammed "aggressively", followed by screams. The woman said she "did not think anything of it" at first, but then she heard the scream.
PC Christopher Sinnott, one of the first emergency service responders to attend the scene, was then called to give evidence. He described how he was dispatched to attend reports of "concerns for the safety of a young woman" and "arrived at the same time" as two other police officers. PC Sinnott described the dog as "cowering in the corner in its bed". He also "counted between eight and 10 bullet casings" during his second search.Firearms expert Andre de Villiers Horne was called to give evidence, and described how the weapon used in the shooting - a Skorpion submachine gun - would have been capable of firing "between 14 and 15 rounds per second" when in fully automatic mode, although it also has a single shot mode.
The positioning of ricochet marks and bullet holes meanwhile indicated that there had been "movement between the shots" by the gunman. The witness said: "In my view, the target would have been moving towards the kitchen and into the kitchen."The court was told more about events following the shooting, with Peers said to have booked a two-night stay at the Mercure Hotel in St Helens for the evenings of August 21 and 22 via Booking.com.
Ashley's dad Stephen Dunne left the public gallery as this footage was shown to the court. Witham was seen settling his £44.40 bill before leaving and heading for Lloyds bank on Church Street. His dad and sister, James Witham Snr and Julie Witham, were present inside the address at the time. The latter had texted her brother four minutes after officers executed the search warrant.
He booked a three-night stay in a single room for Witham at the Mercure Hotel in Aberdeen via Booking.com on August 30, with the bill again being paid in cash. A Kia Sportage was then said to have travelled from Scotland to Liverpool on September 4, before making the return journey in the early hours of September 5.
The jury also heard details of Niall Barry's arrest at Formby Hall Hotel on August 24. Sergeant Christopher Lowe, who was part of a specialist firearms team that arrested Barry, told the court he was located in room 223 and had guns pointed at him by between six or seven firearms officers.
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