The family of Olivia Pratt-Kobel – the nine-year-old girl shot dead at her home in Liverpool – has paid tribute to “our sassy queen” and said her murder “feels like a nightmare”.
The child was killed when a gunman stormed into their house in the city’s Dovecot area on Monday night and opened fire.
Detectives say Olivia’s mother Cheryl Korbel had opened her door after hearing a disturbance outside. A man named as gang member Joseph Nee stormed into the property in an apparent attempt to evade a gunman who was chasing him. The shooter followed him, firing indiscriminately inside, hitting Olivia, her mother and Nee.
Neither men had anything to do with the family.
On Wednesday, a growing number of flowers and Teddy bears had been left at the scene in Kingsworth Avenue – with one signed off by an aunty Kim and uncle Tim.
“RIP baby girl,” it reads. “I can’t believe what has happened, feels like a nightmare. We will miss you so much our sassy queen. Love aunty Kim and uncle Tim.”
Another message reads: “Our Liv, our brown-eyed sassy pants. I will never find the words to describe the heartache we have all felt. I’ll miss your outgoing, sassy little self and all the joy, laughs, smiles, love you brought to our lives. Love you forever and always.”
A third, apparently left by a child, says: “You had so much potential. We will always miss you in class, nobody can replace you.”
A mother laying flowers on Wednesday afternoon said that, while her own daughters did not know Olivia, they felt it was an important gesture. “We wanted to pay our respects,” she said.
It comes after police arrested Nee while he lay in hospital in a serious condition.
Merseyside Police said he was being held on a prison recall and would be interviewed. Reports say he was previously jailed for 45 months in 2018 for multiple burglary offences.
The force has also said that detectives have been given the same name by two different members of the public – with both thought to have first been told to The Drive community centre, which had been used by the Korbel family in the past.
