An environmental health worker who was shot dead in her home told a friend of her fear that one of her alleged killers was “on some pure rampage” weeks before she was killed.
Ashley Dale, 28, told another friend “my nerves are gone over it all”, referring to a row between her boyfriend, Lee Harrison, and one of the defendants, Niall Barry, who had threatened to stab him at Glastonbury festival, Liverpool crown court heard.
Dale was shot in the abdomen with a Skorpion submachine gun in the early hours of Sunday 21 August last year by James Witham, who the prosecution alleges was a member of a gang with his co-defendants, Niall Barry, Sean Zeisz, Ian Fitzgibbon and Joseph Peers, who are all charged with murder.
Witham, 41, kicked down the door of Dale’s home in Old Swan, Liverpool, and fired more than a dozen rounds in different rooms as part of a years-long dispute between Barry and Harrison, jurors heard.
The feud was exacerbated in June last year when Barry pulled out a knife and said he would stab Harrison at Glastonbury festival after a fight between members of the rival gangs, the court was told.
Tensions were further raised when Zeisz’s girlfriend, Olivia McDowell, left him and started dating a member of the other gang, as she had been friends with both groups.
Things became even more heated in July after the suicide of a mutual friend, Rikki Warnick, according to messages between Dale, McDowell and another friend called Sophie. The messages show how the women felt “stuck in the middle” after Barry, whose nickname is Branch, had made threats against Harrison, with Dale worried that the defendant knew where she lived.
Four weeks before her death, she wrote: “Branch sayin he was coming down on Tuesday and that but he never came like. Someone’s [obviously] rattled his cage,” she wrote, adding: “But it’s scary because he’s on some pure rampage.”
She described conversations with Harrison where she had urged him to tell her exactly what had gone on between the pair, saying: “You’ve got to prepare me for the worst.” She also described how Harrison told her he did not want to be in a dispute with Barry.
On Thursday at the opening of the trial, the court heard how Harrison was not at Dale’s home when she was shot in the abdomen “causing catastrophic damage”. She died shortly afterwards in the yard behind her house after police were unable to resuscitate her.
The prosecutor, Paul Greaney KC, said: “When Ashley Dale saw James Witham, she screamed, shouted: ‘Get the fuck out,’ and attempted to run for her life. She fled, pursued by James Witham, into the dining room in a desperate attempt to reach the back door. As she did so James Witham opened fire with the submachine gun.”
Witham moved through the house firing shots that were left embedded in the walls and floors of the hallway, dining room, kitchen and bedroom of Dale’s home, Greaney said, “to send a firm message to Lee Harrison”. “That message was that he, Lee Harrison, had been the principal target of this attack and he too should be dead, along with Ashley.”
Dale’s death was one of three fatal shootings in Liverpool in one week in August 2022, including that of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who was murdered in her own home by a drug dealer, Thomas Cashman.
The five defendants deny murdering Dale and also deny conspiracy to murder Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon and ammunition.
A sixth defendant, Kallum Radford, denies assisting an offender. The trial continues.
