Police have shared Connor Chapman's mugshot which was taken after he was arrested in Tesco for the murder of Elle Edwards.
Elle, 26, was with friends and family in the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village when she was shot in the back of the head by Chapman, 23. The cowardly gunman let off 12 shots with a Skorpion submachine gun and also injured five men, one critically.
A jury of seven women and five men came to a unanimous decision this afternoon after three hours and 48 minutes of deliberation, following a three and a half week trial at Liverpool Crown Court. Chapman was found guilty on all counts and his friend, Thomas Waring, 20, was convicted of possession of a prohibited weapon, and also assisting an offender by helping Chapman torch the stolen black Mercedes car used to flee the scene.
READ MORE: Elle Edwards latest: Jury retires to consider verdicts in Connor Chapman murder trial
Following the verdict being given in court, Merseyside Police has released the mugshot taken of Connor Chapman after he was arrested while shopping in Tesco. The gunman fled to Penllywyn Lodges in Mid Wales after the murder in what was described as a "romantic getaway" with his girlfriend.
But police would trace him to the Tesco store in Newtown, Powys, on January 10 and swarmed him at the checkout. The court had heard 23-year-old career criminal Chapman, described as “at the heart” of the Woodchurch estate organised crime group, lurked outside the busy pub for nearly three hours before the shooting.
Inside, Elle was recorded on CCTV happily chatting with her friends. At one stage she even left for a period to go to another pub, before dropping her sister Lucy off at home and returning to the Lighthouse.
At 11.47pm, Elle left the pub for a cigarette where she was seen on CCTV chatting to the other victims. Meanwhile, with his trademark long brown hair and face covered by a hood or balaclava, Chapman was loitering in the car-park.
Harrowing CCTV footage, played again and again in the trial as Elle’s family looked on, showed him stepping out from the side of the pub and unleashing 12 shots from a military style Skorpion sub-machine gun while simultaneously backing towards the getaway car. Elle was seen slumping forwards, instantly unconscious.
The jury heard the astonishingly reckless attack was the “culmination” of a violent, tit-for-tat feud between the Woodchurch group and its rival, a gang based around the Beechwood/Ford estate on the opposite side of the M53 motorway.
Chapman and Waring will be sentenced at 2pm tomorrow.
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