The man accused of shooting Elle Edwards dead "called the shots" in a gang which was engaged in a violent feud with rival criminals, a jury has heard.
Connor Chapman is currently standing trial accused of murdering the popular beautician, who was killed aged 26 after being shot in the head outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey, Wirral, on Christmas Eve last year. She was said to have been the "wholly innocent" victim of an attack which was the culmination of a series of "tit for tat" incidents between warring groups based on the Woodchurch and Beechwood estates.
These included the shootings of Curtis Byrne and Kieran Cowley earlier the same month and a serious assault upon Sam Searson on December 23 2022. This beating was carried out by the supposed intended targets of the Lighthouse shooting, Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy.
READ MORE: Elle Edwards latest: Live updates as Connor Chapman trial enters final stages
Jurors have now heard all of the evidence in the case, with the trial today turning to closing speeches. Nigel Power KC, prosecuting, addressed the court first and said: "This is a trial many, many people will never forget.
"It involves human tragedy in its purest and most appalling sense. Gun crime often includes criminals shooting at each other.
"There’s no doubt this is such an event. But of course here a young, beautiful, unconnected, innocent life was brutally ended as a direct result of the then ongoing - but, for now at least, paused - gun feud between the Ford Estate and the Woodchurch Estate."
Chapman, 23, was linked to a burglary on Thirlmere Avenue in Noctorum in November in which both Byrne and a third man, Mason Smith, were involved. Mr Power added: "In the 19 days before Elle Edwards was murdered, Curtis Byrne had been shot and there was a shooting on Mason Smith’s doorstep.
"Both of them were Connor Chapman’s friends and his criminal associates. They were shot with the same gun, and so by the same organisation.
"That organisation is a gang on the Ford Estate. Two people involved on that side of the fence, Jake Duffy and William Duggan, were both in the Lighthouse on Christmas Eve.
“This was targeted gun violence. It was aimed from the Ford Estate to the Woodchurch Estate, not just generally but at Connor Chapman’s criminal associates and two people who were in the pub in Wallasey on the night Elle was murdered.
“That targeted shooting wasn’t provoked solely by the attack by Jake Duffy and Kieron Salkeld on Sam Searson. That was a savage attack.
"It clearly wasn’t, as Connor Chapman tried to suggest, funny or petty. Everyone knew about it.
"And so it was this highly dangerous manifestation of the Ford Woodchurch feud that was having a direct effect on Connor Chapman’s criminal associates. It was open and blatant, and it couldn’t be left unchecked - it wasn’t left unchecked."
Mr Power referenced a Facebook status posted by Chapman four days after the murder and apparently calling for calm, in which he stated "enough is enough". The alleged gunman claimed on the stand that this had showed him trying to act as a "mediator" between the feuding gangs.
But the prosecutor said of this in his address: “That Facebook post by Connor Chapman on December 28 shows that he was the person calling the shots from the Woodchurch side of all of this.”
Mr Power also described co-defendant Thomas Waring's decision not to give evidence from the witness box as the "ultimate in cowardice". The 20-year-old, of Private Drive in Barnston, denies possession of a prohibited weapon and assisting an offender.
Chapman - of Houghton Road in Woodchurch - has meanwhile pleaded not guilty to Elle's murder, attempting to murder Salkeld and Duffy, wounding with intent against Liam Carr and Harry Loughran, assault occasioning actual bodily harm against Nicholas Speed and possession of an imitation firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life. The trial continues.
