The people of Liverpool have been urged to turn in the masked gunman who killed a nine-year-old girl as he chased his intended target into her home.
The chief constable of Merseyside police, Serena Kennedy, said the “shocking” killing of Olivia Pratt-Korbel “crosses every single boundary”, as the force appealed to the “criminal fraternity” in Liverpool for information.
The BBC reported that two sources had come forward and given the same name to Merseyside police as of Wednesday morning.
Officers believe the 35-year-old intended victim is a well-known member of an organised crime group whose main commodity is drugs.
After being shot, he is believed to have used a mobile phone to call at least two associates, who pulled up in an Audi car and took him to hospital.
One senior source said he escaped the house “like a coward”, walking past the dying Olivia and her injured mother on the way out, having brought the carnage to them while trying to save himself from a gangland killing.
Detectives were at his hospital bedside and trying to talk to him. Armed officers were on standby to arrest or shoot the gunman if he was located.
Harry Doyle, the assistant mayor of Liverpool and councillor for the area where the shooting took place, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Liverpool had changed in the last 15 years and he was confident Olivia’s killer would be brought to justice.
He said a charity community centre, The Drive, near the crime scene in Finch Lane, was open on Wednesday for people to come forward if they preferred to share information with people they “know and trust”.
“The city is in a different place to where it was 15 years ago,” he said. “People have tried to draw a line with the murder of Rhys Jones … the city has moved a lot in the last 15 years … our understanding and police understanding has changed particularly around gun crime … we’re confident we will get justice.”
Tom Williams, the auxiliary bishop of Liverpool, said anger was now the most prevalent emotion in the city. He rejected the notion that Liverpool was a divided city, or that it was the criminals versus the rest.
He told BBC Breakfast: “The one thing that gets me is that people get the impression that we’re a divided city, there’s criminals and everything else. It’s not divided 50/50. There’s a very small percentage and it’s them getting all the headlines all the time which upsets me most of all.
“There’s obviously an element, which we would say is the criminal element, which is there – it’s a minority, it’s a very small minority.”
Olivia died on Monday night when a 35-year-old man, unknown to the family, ran into her terrace house in Kingsheath Avenue, in the Dovecot area of the city, in an attempt to get away from a gunman, police said.
The nine-year-old was standing directly behind her mother, Cheryl, when the gunman opened fire. The bullet struck Cheryl in the wrist and passed through her and into Olivia’s chest. The gunman fired again at the fleeing alleged gang member.
Police arrived and Olivia was rushed to Alder Hey children’s hospital, where she died.
Olivia went to St Margaret Mary’s Catholic junior school in Huyton, where she was thought of as a kind-hearted, helpful and happy little girl, according to her headteacher, Rebecca Wilkinson.
She said: “Olivia was a much-loved member of our school. She had a beautiful smile, a lovely sense of humour and a bubbly personality. She was kind-hearted and would go out of her way to help others.”
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, described the shooting as an “unimaginable tragedy” and promised that Merseyside police would get “whatever they need to catch those responsible”.
The killing happened exactly 15 years after 11-year-old Rhys Jones was fatally shot in Croxteth, Liverpool.
