Elle Edwards’s dad said his daughter’s killer was a “scumbag” without an “ounce of remorse” as he described the loss of his “best mate”.
Tim Edwards sat in silence through nearly four weeks of court proceedings, where he saw footage of the moment his daughter died time and time again. Elle, 26, was shot twice in the head, and five men were injured, outside the Lighthouse pub shortly before midnight on Christmas Eve.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the gunman sprayed the front entrance with bullets from a Skorpion sub-machine gun as part of an escalating gang feud. Today the jury of seven women and five men unanimously concluded that Chapman, 23, was guilty of Elle’s murder and attempting to murder two of the men also hit, Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy, after three hours and 48 minutes of deliberations.
READ MORE: Connor Chapman guilty of Elle Edwards murder outside busy pub
Talking about life after losing Elle, Mr Edwards said: “I think Elle’s legacy hopefully will be something that people draw a bit of positivity from. She was a caring person, she would give more of her time to other people than she did to herself.
“If she can be remembered for that and for her warmth and her young 26-year-old happy-go-lucky life that she was living.”
Photographer Mr Edwards smiled as he recalled how Elle, her younger sister Lucy and their dad would go out together and “get in loads of trouble”.
He said: “I was lucky enough to be her father but we were also like best mates so there’s loads of good memories of laughter and stupid things that we did together, which you wouldn’t be able to print.
“She started walking with me, because I do a lot of walking in the mountains and stuff, and she was getting into that with me. It took me a couple of years to talk her into it. I did actually drag her up Snowdon and lied to her that we weren’t going to Snowdon. We got halfway and she said ‘where are we, Dad?’ and I said ‘oh yeah, forgot to tell you, we’re halfway up Snowdon’. But she loved it.
“The three of us, me and the two girls, would always have a night out somewhere. We liked live music. And I’m involved with a couple of bands over on the Wirral so we’d always end up watching a band somewhere and then get absolutely rotten drunk like all rock and roll bands should.”
Mr Edwards’ face hardened when asked about the man now facing decades behind bars for taking his daughter’s life.
He said: “He’s a scumbag isn’t he? An absolute scumbag. No remorse, not one ounce, not one sign of regret for what he’s done. If anything, arrogant to actually believe he can pull the wool over people’s eyes and get away with it. I couldn’t care less about that thing.”
Instead he prefers to focus on memories of life with Elle, including a trip to the Christmas markets in Manchester days before the shooting.
He said: “That got messy, that got really messy, but it was a cracking night that. We had a laugh, it was really good. I’m glad I got that time to have.
“We’d just get into trouble, the three of us would go out together and it would always end up in some stupid scenario.
I used to get them to come to cool places so they could spend time with me and it worked. We always had a laugh.”
Mr Edwards said he has drawn strength from his surviving children and has tried to remain strong for the family, which he says is exactly how Elle would have wanted it.
He said: “Her sister lived in Dubai so she would when she had the chance she would be out there doing what any 26-year-old should be doing.
“They were best mates as well as sisters. They had the best of both worlds where they could fight and argue like sisters do but they’d also have the good times as best mates do. They had a really good relationship, very close, tight.
"Lucy’s fine, she’s working, she’s back here now, she’s back home. She’s keeping herself busy through work. She’s a strong girl, she’s very strong, like all the kids, they’re all strong and Gaynor, Elle’s mother, I think that’s where they get it from to be fair.
"They’re coping really well. I think we all have the same attitude in our family where it’s either give up and crawl under a rock or you just face it and get on with it and our attitude in our family is just to get on with it and take it on the chin.
"She wouldn’t want you sitting around moping and going downhill, she wouldn’t want that, she’d want you live the best life you possibly can. That was the way she approached people or dealt with people, she’d lift your spirits.”
Mr Edwards thanked the community in Wirral and the wider region for their support, saying: “The local community where I live in the Wirral, they’ve been supportive but I’ve felt that throughout the country, from everywhere I’ve been.
"People have approached me or stopped me or gone out their way to come and say what they want to say and it’s always positive, it’s always supportive, it’s a nice thing. You know you’re not on your own then and it does carry a lot of weight, especially in my own local community where I live because they’re the people you see every day. I’ve had no negative input from anyone.”
When asked what justice would mean, he said: “It just means he’s off the streets, someone else is not going to suffer at the hands of him. Unfortunately Elle was his last victim but thankfully she will be the last person he does anything to and he can go fade away. We’ve got justice and we can start going forward then.”
Chapman was convicted of Elle’s murder, the attempted murders of Salkeld and Duffy, wounding bystanders Harry Loughran and Liam Carr with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assaulting Nicholas Speed causing actual bodily harm.
He was also convicted of possessing an prohibited weapon and ammunition with intent to endanger life. His co-defendant, 20-year-old Thomas Waring of Private Drive, Barnston, was convicted of assisting an offender and possession of an offensive weapon.
Both men face sentence on Friday afternoon.
