The older brother of Olivia Pratt-Korbel has told of how he “knew it was over” when the nine-year-old was not responding to CPR after being shot in the chest.
Ryan Korbel said Olivia’s lips had turned blue despite attempts from a neighbour to save her life following the shooting by a masked gunman – alleged to be Thomas Cashman, 34 – in her home in Liverpool on 22 August last year.
In a police interview the day after the attack, which was shown to the jury at Manchester crown court, Korbel said: “It all happened so fucking fast. To me, he took his opportunity, all you could see was an arm and a gun. Bang. It just slid back out the door.”
Korbel said he did not initially know Olivia had been shot, though he had seen a bullet had gone through his mother Cheryl’s hand as she tried to prevent a man, Joseph Nee, from taking refuge in her home while fleeing the gunman.
He said: “I didn’t know what was going on. I just wanted the ambulance to turn up.”
He said his mother had asked him to apply pressure to Olivia’s chest and that is when he saw the “tiny” bullet hole.
Ryan’s other sister, Chloe, was on the phone to the emergency services while a neighbour began trying to save Olivia’s life.
He said: “Every time I went to the stairs, he was giving CPR and he wouldn’t stop. Her lips were going blue, she wasn’t even bleeding out the gunshot wound. I knew it was over.”
The court also heard from a former lover of Cashman, who told police she knew “he’d done something wrong” when he appeared at her house after the shooting.
In a video interview with police that was played to jurors, the woman, who had a previous sexual relationship with Cashman, said he came into her house and woke her up.
The woman said: “I was half asleep – I didn’t know what was going on. It was all too quick.”
She told police that Cashman said: “‘I’ve done Joey,’ something like that. Or ‘I’ve gone for him.’ Something along those lines. I know he’d done something wrong.
“I didn’t know he’d had a gun. I thought he’d had a fight with someone or slashed someone. To me, it could have been anything. I don’t know what he’s up to.
“It could have been drugs. I believe he knew he’d done something bad, that’s why he was in no fit state. There was something more than what he was saying about Joey. I had a feeling there was something more to it.”
She said he had asked for a change of clothes and that he left with Paul Russell, a man whom the woman had called for help and who was known to both of them.
She said: “[Cashman] was very nervous. I never seen him like that. I felt like there was something wrong.”
Later, after reading news reports, she began to put the pieces together and theorised that Cashman may have been the masked gunman who shot Olivia, and she did not want Cheryl Korbel to be denied justice for her daughter, the court heard.
She said: “This is the reason why I am doing what I am doing. I do not want that woman, I don’t want her to not have them answers. It’s her little girl, at the end of the day. It could have been anyone that night, it could have been anyone’s house.”
She said Cashman was “nice” and “a generous lad” and she had in the past been infatuated with him. But the relationship had taken a sour turn when she thought he was seeing other women, and she had previously told a friend that she wanted to expose Cashman for “what a rat he was” and she wanted to “ruin him like he has done me”.
She said she believed the defendant turned up at her house that night because he trusted her. “He didn’t know who else to trust,” she said. “Why would he put me in that situation? He knows I wouldn’t open me mouth.”
She was angry at the thought that she had been drawn into a crime, she said. “I was devastated the fact that piece of shit never took them clothes with him. He’s jeopardised everyone’s life just to save his own back. It’s really done my head in … He’d already done what he’d done.”
Cashman, of West Derby, denies Olivia’s murder and four other charges: the attempted murder of Nee, wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm on Olivia’s mother, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
The trial continues.
