A woman who was shot dead while celebrating Christmas Eve with friends at a pub in Wirral was a “wholly innocent bystander” caught up in a gang feud, a court has heard.
Connor Chapman, 23, is on trial at Liverpool crown court charged with the murder of Elle Edwards, 26, who was on an “enjoyable night out” with friends at the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village on 24 December last year.
Chapman used a military grade submachine gun to spray bullets at a group from a rival estate, the prosecutor, Nigel Power KC, told the jury.
A video of the attack played in court showed how five people were injured and Edwards was killed when a man opened fire after rounding the corner of the pub from the car park. The prosecution says it was an attempt to kill two men: Jake Duffy and Kieran Salkeld.
Power said: “Although they were injured, Elle Edwards, a wholly innocent bystander, was killed by two bullets which entered the back of the left side of her head.”
The court heard that the shooting came after a series of back and forth attacks between the groups from the Woodchurch and Ford estates, on either side of the M53 in Wirral, which included assaults, burglaries and shootings.
Power said: “What we say it shows is that what otherwise might have been viewed as a random or inexplicable shooting of a wholly innocent woman, Elle Edwards, was in fact the culmination of an ongoing feud between people from, on the one hand, the Woodchurch estate, and on the other hand, from the Ford Estate, which included Jake Duffy and Kieran Salkeld, who were the intended victims of the shooting.”
A postmortem examination showed that Edwards suffered non-survivable injuries, having been hit twice in the back of her head, with a bullet passing through her skull and brain and exiting just above the right eye. The second bullet passed through the skull bone and into the brain.
Power said DNA evidence linking Chapman to a bullet casing found at the scene was “hugely significant”, providing a strong support linking him to the discharged bullet.
Chapman, wearing a white shirt and grey tie with his hair tied back, denies the murder of Edwards, two counts of attempted murder and three counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
He also denies possession of a Škorpion submachine gun with intent to endanger life and possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life.
His co-defendant, 20-year-old Thomas Waring, of Barnston, Wirral, denies possessing a prohibited weapon and assisting an offender by helping Chapman to dispose of the car.
