Police have condemned the “pariahs” using guns on Britain’s streets after a man was chased into a residential garden and shot near where Olivia Pratt-Korbel was murdered.
Merseyside police said officers were called to reports of gunshots and screaming in the Huyton area of Liverpool at 9.45pm on Tuesday.
A 37-year-old man had been shot multiple times in the legs and feet after being chased into the front garden of a house on Brookwood Road, the force said.
The street of semi-detached homes is less than two miles from where nine-year-old Olivia was murdered when Thomas Cashman opened fire on a convicted drug dealer who had burst into her home last August.
Merseyside police are hunting for the gunman behind Tuesday night’s shooting. The victim was in hospital with non-life threatening injuries, the force said.
DI Alyson Keenan said: “In the last year we have all seen the heartbreaking devastation that can be caused by those who use guns on our streets.
“These people should be treated like pariahs who are not welcome in our communities because of the harm they bring.”
A forensics team was investigating at the scene on Wednesday and patrols were increased in the area.
Police in Liverpool said they were increasingly concerned about the reckless use of firearms on the city’s streets after the murders of several bystanders in the past 12 months.
Cashman, 34, was jailed for life last month and ordered to serve a minimum of 42 years for Olivia’s murder and other offences.
The “beautiful, sassy, chatty girl” had been standing behind her mother when Cashman chased another local criminal into their home and opened fire at around 10pm on 22 August last year.
The schoolgirl was fatally struck by a single bullet that had gone through the door and the hand of her mother, Cheryl Korbel.
