A man shot dead in the street was "shown no mercy" in a "public execution", a court was told.
Patrick Boyle was killed by a gunman riding an electric bike in Huyton last year. Prosecutors allege the attack was carried out by Reuben Murphy as part of a plot involving co-defendants Ben Doyle and Thomas Walker. All three deny murder.
Mr Boyle was pronounced dead after being rushed to Whiston Hospital on July 1. He had been shot twice by a masked attacker wielding a self-loading pistol on Newway, a cul-de-sac off Lordens Road, just before 6pm.
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The trial opened this morning at Liverpool Crown Court, where Ian Unsworth, QC, prosecuting, told jurors: “One evening last summer, a masked gunman approached, shot and killed a 26-year-old man in a Liverpool residential street. It was, in every sense, a public execution.
“The case for the prosecution is that the masked gunman was the defendant, Reuben Murphy, who, in a deliberate and ruthless attack showed his victim, Patrick Boyle, no mercy. Two bullets were pumped into Mr Boyle's chest. He stood no chance.
"Whilst Reuben Murphy alone pulled the trigger, he was not alone in this enterprise. The defendants Ben Doyle and Thomas Walker are, we suggest, also complicit in the murder of Patrick Boyle.”
According to the prosecution case Walker’s DNA was found on a bullet casing at the scene of the shooting, and the street Doyle lived in, Lyme Grove in Huyton, was “a hub for the launch of the fatal attack”.Mr Unsworth said that, on the afternoon of the shooting, CCTV evidence suggested there had been an “altercation” in Lyme Grove after two men, one believed to be an associate of Mr Boyle, were seen arriving in the area.
Shortly after they turned up, it is claimed a camera captured Murphy running from the street. In the hours that followed, Mr Unsworth said it was the prosecution case that Murphy was in contact with Doyle and Walker and that CCTV captured significant footage - particularly of men they claim to be Doyle and Murphy, and of an electric bike - around Lyme Grove.
The jury heard that less than 20 minutes before the shooting, two people were recorded leaving the garden of a property close to Doyle's home on Lyme Grove, one on an electric bike. It was alleged Doyle was on the bike and that he was soon joined by Murphy who, in the minutes that followed, split from his associate and used the bike as his mode of transport to find Boyle and shoot him.
Mr Boyle was struck by at least two bullets, with detectives believing three shots may have been fired. Jurors were today given an overview of witness statements from people who saw that attack and its aftermath.
Mr Unsworth said one woman heard three loud "popping" noises, adding: “She went outside and spoke to her neighbour, and as she did so a male rode past on a bicycle. That male was, she remembered, wearing a black jacket with their hood up. They were holding on to the bike with their left hand whilst their right hand pushed what appeared to be a gun, approximately six inches in size, into their pocket.”
That same witness also saw the “outline” of Mr Boyle, from Kirkdale, slumped in a nearby doorway and called 999 before seeing him being “bundled into a dark coloured Audi motor vehicle which drove off at speed”.
That vehicle took Mr Boyle to hospital where his friend, Kaes Hughes, said he had been shot in the chest by someone wearing a coronavirus face mask. Mr Hughes said: "All’s I know is, there was a pedal bike, I heard two bangs, and that was it".
Asked to describe the attacker, he said: "All black, and a corona mask, that was it, I couldn't even tell ya what he was wearing mate, it was just all black".
Murphy, 26 and of Oak Avenue, Newton-le-Willows; Doyle, 24 and of Lyme Grove; and Walker, 20 and of no fixed address but formerly of Clubmoor, all deny murder, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and possessing ammunition with intent to endanger life.
Proceeding
