Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s wounded mother screamed “she’s dying” after a gunman who broke into the family’s home shot the nine-year-old girl, in a murder trial hearing today.
Cheryl Korbel was “completely heartbroken” as she begged someone to bring a towel outside the house in Dovecote, Liverpool, a neighbor told the court.
The mother, who was shot in the hand trying desperately to lock the front door, pleaded to go to the same hospital as her daughter but was taken to another location, jurors heard.
Neighbors later told police that Ms Korbel was “completely heartbroken” in the moments after she found out Olivia had been shot.
One who describes seeing her leave screaming: ‘She’s dying, she’s been shot in the chest. Does anyone have a towel?
The trial of the man accused of murdering Olivia Pratt-Korbel continued in Manchester today
Moments after Olivia was taken from her Liverpool home by armed police to nearby Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, her mother Cheryl was carried away on a stretcher, witnesses said.
The 46-year-old woman was ‘screaming’ that she ‘wanted to go to Alder Hey with her son’, one told police later in a statement read to the jury today.
However, jury have been told that Ms Korbel was taken to Aintree Hospital.
Tragically, Olivia was pronounced dead about an hour after arriving at Alder Hey.
Olivia had been in bed at the family home in Liverpool on August 22 last year, but came downstairs after hearing loud banging from the street and said: “Mum, I’m scared.”
A murder trial at Manchester Crown Court heard that when his mother tried to block the front door, suspected gunman Thomas Cashman fired a shot that missed his target, Joseph Nee, and instead fatally wounded the schoolgirl.
After firing another shot that hit the door frame, the 34-year-old gunman “jumped from one garden to another” until he reached the nearby home of a woman with whom he had previously had a sexual relationship, he was told. to the jury.
Dramatic eyewitness accounts of neighbors who watched in horror as the gunshots rang out on their street were read to jurors today.
Lisa Boylan, who was sitting in a parked car on the street, described seeing a man dressed in a gray tracksuit run past pleading, “No, boy.”
He was being chased by a man dressed in black about 8 feet away who was carrying a black handgun and had his face covered by a ski mask, he told police.
“I couldn’t believe what happened in front of me, it all happened so fast.”
Olivia’s mother, Cheryl Korbel, arrives at Manchester Crown Court on Monday for Cashman’s trial.
The gunman “glared” at her as she ran past, she said, adding: “It scared me that he saw us.”
The first man then ran off the sidewalk toward a house and she heard a “loud bang” that sounded like someone “kicked the door open.”
After hearing more shots, her daughter Libby, who was in the driver’s seat, drove away ‘in case we were the next shots’ as she dialed 999.
They returned minutes later to see police carrying Olivia in a “bloody” nightgown into a BMW patrol car before driving away “at high speed”.
“She seemed limp,” he told police in a statement read to the jury.
Everything she had witnessed had made her feel “sick”, she told police.
Adele Marr, who lived across the street from Olivia’s house, told police she heard what she thought were fireworks and looked out her window to see one man chasing another.
Moments later he heard ‘the worst screaming I’ve ever heard in my life’.
Another neighbor recalled seeing Olivia’s mother outside her house before returning to her front door “in a panic.”
The chased man, Nee, then ran to the front door yelling “Help me!” before there was another explosion and a flash, witness Olivia Heffron said.
The gunman, supposedly Cashman, then ‘hesitated’ before ‘charging’ the door.
There was another explosion before the gunman took off running.
Nee then “stumbled” out of the house and “collapsed in the middle of the road,” the witness told police.
An Elizabeth Cook court sketch of Thomas Cashman appearing in the dock at an earlier hearing
Using his mobile phone, he called someone saying he had been shot before starting to ‘throw around, moan’.
Minutes later a black Audi pulled up and the men got out, picked up Nee and then drove off, taking him to the hospital.
None of the neighbors recognized either of them, they told police.
Previous jurors listened to the friend who was with Nee when the first shots rang out.
Paul Abraham said moments after they left a friend’s house where they had been watching a televised football match that he ‘heard banging’.
“I thought it was fireworks,” the 41-year-old said in a video interview shown to jurors, only realizing someone was shooting at them when his friend “fell down.”
“One must have caught Joey,” he added.
He recounted how Nee, who the jury heard was hit in the stomach, rolled on the ground, then got up and ran on, pleading, ‘Please, no, please.’
Abraham said he saw the hooded gunman with his arms outstretched before jumping over fences to escape, adding that he was “running for my life.”
Timothy Naylor, at whose nearby home they had watched the football, told police that he and Nee had socialized and played golf together since Nee “last got out of jail,” the jury heard.
Mr. Naylor said he had no idea Nee’s life was in danger and if he had, he “would never have had him in my house.”
According to the indictment, Cashman engaged in a “ruthless pursuit” to shoot Nee “at all costs without any regard for anyone else in the community.”
But it was a shooting gone “terribly wrong,” David McLachlan KC said.
Cashman, from West Derby, Liverpool, denies the murder of Olivia, the attempted murder of Nee and the intentional wounding of his mother.
He also denies two counts of possession of a firearm with the intent to endanger life.
The trial continues.
