Police bodycam footage shows the moment a man was arrested on his birthday for the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.
The schoolgirl was fatally shot at her home on 22 August last year, after gunman Thomas Cashman chased his intended target Joseph Nee into her home in Dovecot, Liverpool.
During the trial, the jury heard the schoolgirl ran downstairs after hearing shots outside, saying “I’m scared mummy, I’m scared”. The bullet which killed Olivia was fired through the front door, hitting her mother in the hand before striking the schoolgirl in the chest.
Nee, a 36-year-old with a number of previous convictions, was injured before he ran towards the house after three shots were fired from a self-loading pistol in the street on Kingsheath Avenue. The gunman fired a further two shots into the Korbel family home, one which killed Olivia and the other which became lodged in the door.
A jury at Manchester Crown Court found Cashman guilty of the murder of Olivia on Thursday, the attempted murder of Nee, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Cheryl Korbel, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Now, police bodycam footage reveals the moment he was arrested on 4 September, just shy of two weeks after Olivia’s murder. Pinned down and handcuffed in a corridor, Cashman can be heard swearing at a number of officers.
“What’s it for? What have I done?” he says as he is hauled to his feet. "I ain’t resisting one little bit. I just want to know what I’ve done. That’s all. All I want to know is what I’m arrested for. Tell me what I’m arrested for!"
Then told that is he being arrested on suspicion of murder alongside two counts of attempted murder, he protests that he hasn’t “committed no offence.” “What are you on about, murder?” he says as the arrest caution is read out..
Detective Superintendent Mark Baker described Cashman’s actions as “abhorrent”.
“When he found out that he had shot an innocent young girl, he should have had the courage to stand up and come forward”, DS Baker said. “Instead, he chose to lie low despite the fact that he was a dad himself.”
