By the spring of 2022 it was obvious that members of the Woodchurch estate gang had made serious enemies among a rival firm from across the M53 motorway in Wirral.
Once upon a time gun crime was rare in Wirral, even during periods when shootings spiked over the water in Liverpool, but last year that went out of the window. There have long been disputes between criminals based in Woodchurch and those based around the Ford (now known as the Beechwood) estate - but this was clearly different.
The “culmination” of that feud was, of course, one of the most shocking and upsetting murders in the history of the region - young Elle Edwards, wholly unconnected to the clashing gangs, gunned down with a sub-machine gun outside a busy pub on Christmas Eve by drug-dealing Woodchurch thug Connor Chapman.
