Ashley Dale's family agony as 'gentle' half brother shot dead seven years before
The shocking murder of Ashley Dale came seven years after her half-brother was also shot dead in a case of mistaken identity.
The 28-year-old council worker was fatally gunned down in her own home in the Old Swan area of Liverpool shortly after midnight on Sunday, August 21. It followed a twisted murder plot sparked by a group's feud with her boyfriend, Lee Harrison.
Four men - James Witham, Joseph Peers, Niall Barry and Sean Zeisz - were this week found guilty of Ms Dale's murder and of conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison. They were also found guilty of conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, namely a Skorpion submachine gun, and ammunition with intent to endanger life. Another man, Ian Fitzgibbon, was cleared of these three charges while a sixth defendant, Kallum Radford, was acquitted of assisting an offender.
Ashley Dale was fatally gunned down in her own home in the Old Swan area of Liverpool in August (PA)
Ashley's half-brother Lewis Dunne was fatally shot on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal towpath in Liverpool in 2015 (PA)An emotional murder trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard how gunman Witham and driver Peers were dispatched to the address to assassinate Mr Harrison and "leave no witnesses" following a falling out with Lee Harrison at Glastonbury Festival. They slashed the tyres of her car and set off the alarm in a failed effort to lure Mr Harrison from the house before kicking the door down, firing 10 bullets as the men chased Ashley around the house.
She was found with gunshot wounds in her back, as neighbours told of hearing screams and later seeing a woman laid groaning in her back garden. Slamming her daughter's killers this week, mum Julie Dale described the seven-week trial as "difficult" after she listened to the defendants "lie" about their involvement with the "horrific" shooting, adding: "These people, not the defendants but certain people, are meant to have loved Ashley and you’ve just gone and lied and lied like her life was worth nothing, ‘just save my own back’ and that’s it." Following the ruling, a police commander meanwhile branded the attackers as "cowards" who had "ruined more lives than they could ever imagine".
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Jake Culshaw, John Martin and Paul Martin, were found guilty of the murder of 16-year-old Lewis Dunne (PA)But the tragedy is not the first of its kind to hit the family, as Ashley's younger half-brother, Lewis Dunne, 16, was also killed in a mistaken identity shooting in 2015. Lewis had been walking along the Leeds-Liverpool canal in Eldonian Village when he was mistaken for a member of a rival gang by brothers Paul and John Martin, and their accomplice, Jake Culshaw. Shocked passers-by found the stricken teenager lying helpless on the pathway and tried to save his life as emergency services raced to the scene. Lewis was taken to hospital by ambulance, but died soon after.
The attackers were found to have targeted Lewis because he had similar 'curly hair' to the man they had intended to hit. The drug-dealing killers were sentenced to 88 years behind bars between them in November 2016, one year after Lewis died from the single shotgun blast.
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