Drug dealer 'threatened Ashley Dale's boyfriend in month before her gun murder'
A drug dealer accused of murdering a council worker admitted threatening to punch her boyfriend in the month before her death, a court heard today.
Ashley Dale, 28, was shot with a Skorpion machine gun in her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in the early hours of August 21 last year. Liverpool Crown Court heard there was a feud between her partner Lee Harrison and the five men accused of her murder.
Giving evidence in court today, Niall Barry, 26, told the court he had been friends with Mr Harrison. However, he said they had stopped speaking in 2018 or 2019 because Mr Harrison was “hanging round” with people who had stolen £30,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis from him.
Ashley Dale, an environmental health officer, was shot dead at her home in Liverpool (Liverpool Echo)
Ashley pictured with her dog Darla (Liverpool Echo)Phone records showed on July 26 last year Barry spoke to Mr Harrison twice on the phone. He told the court he had phoned him after co-defendant James Witham, 41, said Mr Harrison had mentioned Barry’s name in an argument about the theft of drugs.
Asked what he said to Mr Harrison during the phone call, Barry told the court: "I said ‘I’ll come round the estate and I’ll punch your head in’."
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Stan Reiz KC, defending Barry, asked: “That was a threat?” Barry replied: “Yeah.” The court heard Barry went to Glastonbury festival 2022, which was also attended by Miss Dale and Mr Harrison.
He said while at the festival he was told Mr Harrison was there, along with people from a group known as the Hillsiders. Barry said his response to being told that was: “I’m not arsed about them, I’ll stab them up”.
He said the threat was not specifically towards Mr Harrison and he was drunk and “shouldn’t have said it”. The court heard Barry used the handle Bettertrunk on messaging platform EncroChat.
In messages sent on the platform, which were read to the court, he also referred to accessing guns. He said: “I was just talking nonsense basically, I was just basically thinking I was hard. I was young, I was only 22.”
He said in April 2020, when the messages were sent, he had access to a Skorpion machine gun which was in a house that a “drug user was minding”. He said he never accessed the Skorpion though.
The court heard in the summer last year he was supplying cannabis and cocaine, in kilo amounts, to people in areas including North Wales. Barry said he was convicted earlier this year of conspiracy to sell or transfer a prohibited weapon, a sub-machine gun, and had also been convicted of drug supply offences.
Barry, Witham, Sean Zeisz, 28, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29, deny the murder of Miss Dale, conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition. Witham admits manslaughter. Kallum Radford, 26, denies assisting an offender.
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