The gunman who killed a 26-year-old beautician when he opened fire outside a pub on Christmas Eve has been sentenced to life with a minimum term of 48 years.
Connor Chapman, 23, was found guilty of the murder of Elle Edwards following a trial at Liverpool Crown Court. The victim was hit twice in the back of the head when he fired 12 shots from a Skorpion submachine gun outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village, Wirral, Merseyside, shortly before midnight on December 24 last year.
He was sentenced by Mr Justice Goose on Friday. The trial heard the shooting was the culmination of a feud between gangs on the Woodchurch estate, where Chapman lived, and the Beechwood, or Ford, estate on the opposite side of the M53 in Wirral.
The father-of-two claimed he was at home all night when the shooting happened and that he had given another man, whom he refused to name, the key to a stolen Mercedes parked in a car park near his home on Houghton Road.
But, the jury found it was Chapman who had driven the car to the busy pub and waited outside for almost three hours before launching the attack, which injured his targets, Jake Duffy and Kieran Salkeld, and three other men who were unconnected to the feud.
After the shooting he fled the scene in the car and drove to friend Thomas Waring’s house, where CCTV showed Chapman, with distinctive long hair, appearing to drop the gun on the pavement as he walked towards the address.
A week later, on New Year’s Eve, he and Waring, 20, drove to Frodsham, Cheshire, where they burned out the stolen Mercedes.
As well as murder, Chapman was convicted of two counts of attempted murder, two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, as well as possession of a Skorpion submachine gun with intent to endanger life and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
He pleaded guilty before the trial to a charge of handling stolen goods.
Waring, of Private Drive, Barnston, was convicted of possession of a prohibited firearm and assisting an offender and pleaded guilty before the trial to failing to comply with a disclosure notice.
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