She is the very picture of innocence – a beautiful, wispy-haired nine-year-old in a pink dungaree dress and polka dot T-shirt.
Bright, bubbly and caring, Olivia Pratt-Korbel had her whole life ahead of her… so much promise yet to be fulfilled.
I can’t help wondering what was going through her head as she smiled for this family photo? Perhaps she was dreaming of becoming a star, after showing off her performing talent in the school production of Wizard of Oz.
But instead she became the face that broke a nation’s heart. A symbol of the drug and gun violence blighting Britain and all the failed promises to tackle it.
Olivia was shot dead in her Liverpool home by a gunman chasing a drug dealer – 15 years to the day since 11-year-old Rhys Jones was also gunned down in the city.
Rhys’s death was supposed to have been a turning point in the battle against drugs, gangs and guns. Because the death of an innocent, football-mad lad meant we’d reached rock bottom, didn’t it?
Well, things are far worse now in “Triggerpool” where police are not helped by the “no grass” culture of understandably frightened locals. Two men, aged 36 and 33, have since been arrested and bailed in connection with the death of Olivia, who was shot as she got ready for bed.
Perhaps the appeals from her grieving family did spur someone into talking. But it won’t ease the pain of losing the “tiny, cheeky, gorgeous girl” her uncle described when he posted that adorable snap of her. Peter Korbel warned whoever killed her: “This picture is going to haunt you for the rest of your days.”
Well Olivia’s smiling face should haunt many other people too.
It should haunt those who know the identities of all the other gun-wielding gangsters and drug dealers but still keep their misguided omertà. It should haunt the police chiefs and politicians who’ve surrendered the streets to trigger-happy gangsters.
And it should haunt every single person shoving drugs up their noses at middle class dinner parties this weekend. Because many of the people who’ve been expressing their horror at Olivia’s senseless murder are actually feeding the trade that caused it.
Every line of cocaine snorted, every “recreational” pill popped, is just another link in a chain of greed, exploitation, violence and death that blights our communities.
While robbing beautiful innocents like Olivia of the chance to live their dreams.
