Jury in Olivia Pratt-Korbel murder trial hears her mother’s police interview

The heartbroken mother of Olivia Pratt-Korbel said of the moments after her nine-year-old daughter was shot: ‘I knew she had gone… then the police turned up and just picked her up and took her out of the house’. 

Cheryl Korbel, 46, was injured in the shooting which killed her daughter Olivia Pratt-Korbel in Dovecot, Liverpool, after a gunman barged into the family home while chasing his intended victim, Joseph Nee. 

Thomas Cashman, 34, is accused of opening fire at about 10pm on August 22 last year, hitting Olivia in the chest and her mother in the hand. 

Today, the jury in Cashman’s trial heard a video interview in which a sobbing Ms Korbel told police how she watched a neighbour perform CPR on her dying daughter at the bottom of the stairs. 

People in the public gallery wiped away tears as the footage was played to the jury at Manchester Crown Court. 

Olivia’s mother, Cheryl Korbel, arrives at Manchester Crown Court on Monday for Cashman’s trial 

Describing the lead up to her daughter’s shooting, Ms Korbel told police she had heard bangs outside her home and when she went outside to look, saw a man coming up the road. 

‘Then I spotted this other lad behind him, dressed all in black, couldn’t see his face or nothing, and I realised at that point that it was gunshots because, like, the other one was running after him,’ she said. 

‘At that point I realised he was running towards me so I ran back to the house.’

After being given a tissue by her partner, sitting next to her during the interview, Ms Korbel said she closed her front door but it did not shut properly because it was left on the catch.

Speaking through tears, the mother-of-three, with her arm in a bandage, said: ‘I tried to keep hold of the door, I was just screaming, screaming to go away and then I heard the gunshot and I realised, because I felt it hit my hand.

‘I couldn’t keep the door shut because it wasn’t locked, and with my hand I couldn’t keep it shut, so I let it go and I think at the same time I heard the baby speak and that’s when I turned round and I spotted her sat at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I leant over her and like held her to the left, I just huddled over.’

She said her son Ryan helped her to carry Olivia up the stairs and she shouted for a towel to stop the bleeding.

She added: ‘Ryan turned round and said to me ‘mum, I can’t do this’ so I tried to move the baby again up to the top of the stairs.

‘I heard the lad downstairs shouting ‘please lad, don’t’ and I heard another gunshot.

‘I couldn’t keep her awake.’

She added: ‘She went all floppy and her eyes went to the back of her head and I realised that she must have been hit because I didn’t know until then and I lifted her top up and the bullet had got her right in the middle of the chest.’

She said a neighbour came in and started CPR on Olivia.

Ms Korbel said she was taken to hospital for treatment to her hand and while she was there, she was told Olivia ‘had gone’.

She said: ‘I just went hysterical screaming I wanted my baby.’

She described a phone call with a friend who was with Olivia at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Ms Korbel told police: ‘She told me she was with the baby and I told her not to leave her on her own and she promised me that she wouldn’t.

‘She said she looked like she was sleeping, so I made her promise she wouldn’t leave her on her own.’

A court sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Thomas Cashman appearing in the dock at a previous hearing

Earlier today, the court heard how Ms Korbel screamed ‘she’s dying’ after her daughter was shot in the chest. 

Neighbours later told police that Mrs Korbel was ‘completely inconsolable’ in the moments after she discovered Olivia had been shot. 

One describing seeing her come outside crying out: ‘She’s dying, she’s been shot in the chest. Has anyone got a towel?’

Moments after armed police had rushed stricken Olivia from her Liverpool home to nearby Alder Hey children’s hospital, her mother Cheryl was brought out on a stretcher, witnesses said.

The 46-year-old was ‘shouting’ that ‘she wanted to go to Alder Hey with her child’, one told police afterwards in a statement read to the jury today.

However the jury has been told that Mrs Korbel was instead taken to Aintree Hospital.

Tragically Olivia was pronounced dead around an hour after arriving at Alder Hey.

Today jurors were read dramatic eye witness accounts from neighbours who watched in horror as shots rang out in their street.

Lisa Boylan, who was sitting in a parked car in the street, described seeing a man wearing a grey tracksuit run past begging: ‘Don’t, lad.’

He was being chased by a black-clad man about 8ft behind carrying a black handgun, his face covered by a balaclava, she told police.

‘I couldn’t believe what happened in front of me, it all happened so fast.’

The gunman ‘glared’ at her as he ran past, she said, adding: ‘It scared me that he saw us.’

Olivia had been in bed at the family home in Liverpool on August 22 last year, but came downstairs after hearing loud bangs in the street outside saying: ‘Mum I’m scared’ 

The first man then veered off the pavement towards a house and she heard a ‘loud bang’ which sounded like someone ‘booting the door open’.

After hearing further gunshots, her daughter Libby – who was in the driver’s seat – drove away ‘in case we were next shot at’ while she dialled 999.

They returned minutes later and saw police carrying Olivia wearing a nightie ‘with blood all over it’ out to a BMW patrol car before driving away ‘at speed’.

‘She appeared floppy,’ she told police in a statement read to the jury.

Everything she had witnessed had made her feel ‘sick’, she told police.

Rebecca Power was in her bedroom watching a film with her children when she heard two loud bangs and went to the window to see a man outside with a gun chasing a second man.

‘I reacted by pushing my children away from the window. I grabbed my phone and dialled 999. I was terrified,’ she told police.

Adele Marr, who lived opposite Olivia’s house, told police how she heard what she thought were fireworks and looked out of the window to see one man chasing another.

Moments later she heard ‘the worst screaming I’ve ever heard in my life’.

Another neighbour recalled seeing Olivia’s mother outside her house before turning back to her front door ‘in a panic’.

The man being chased – Nee – then sprinted towards the front door shouting ‘Help me!’ before there was another bang and a flash, witness Olivia Heffron said.

The gunman – alleged to be Cashman – then ‘hesitated’ before he ‘charged’ at the door.

There was another bang before the gunman ran off.

Nee then ‘stumbled out’ of the house and ‘collapsed in the middle of the road’, the witness told police.

Using his mobile phone, he called someone saying he had been shot before he began ‘rolling around, groaning’.

Minutes later a black Audi arrived and men got out, picked up Nee and then drove off, taking him to hospital.

None of the neighbours recognised either man, they told police.

Earlier jurors heard from the friend who was with Nee when shots first rang out.

Paul Abraham said moments after they left the friend’s house where they had been watching a televised football match he ‘heard bangs’.

‘I thought it was fireworks,’ the 41-year-old said in a video interview played to the jury, only realising someone was shooting at them when his friend ‘fell over’.

‘One must have got Joey,’ he added.

He told how Nee – who the jury heard was hit in the midriff – rolled on the ground then got back up and carried on running, begging: ‘Please don’t, please don’t.’

Mr Abraham said he saw the hooded gunman with his arms outstretched before he vaulted fences to get away, adding that he was ‘running for my life’.

Timothy Naylor, in whose nearby house they had watched the football, told police he and Nee had socialised and played golf together since Nee ‘came out of jail last time’, the jury heard.

Mr Naylor said he had no idea Nee’s life was at risk and that if he had, ‘I’d never have had him in my house’.

According to the prosecution, Cashman was engaged in a ‘ruthless pursuit’ to shoot Nee ‘at all costs without any consideration for anyone else in the community’.

But it was a shooting which went ‘horribly wrong’, David McLachlan KC said.

Cashman, of West Derby, Liverpool, denies the murder of Olivia, the attempted murder of Nee and the wounding with intent of her mother.

He also denies two counts of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.

The trial continues.