A trial into the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel was temporarily halted after a YouTube video was shared by a former gang leader.
Thomas Cashman was today found guilty of the murder of nine-year-old Olivia who was shot dead at her own home on Kingsheath Avenue in Dovecot on the evening of August 22 last year. Cashman, of Grenadier Drive in West Derby, was today unanimously convicted of murder this afternoon, Thursday, after eight hours of deliberations.
Cashman was also found guilty of attempting to murder Joseph Nee, wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm against Cheryl Korbel and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Cashman has been on trial for the last three-and-a-half weeks at Manchester Crown Court. Once the trial began concerns were raised about material being shared online.
Following discussions behind closed doors on the eighth day of proceedings, Mrs Justice Yip told the jury: “Overnight there has apparently been inappropriate, inaccurate content relating to the case being put online. “That’s something I regard seriously. It will be investigated. It shouldn’t happen.”
The previous evening, March 14, Darren Gee, a former member of a notorious drug-dealing crew which caused misery in Everton's Grizedale estate, shared a Youtube video titled "“Live update on the trial of T Cashman and other organised crime questions”.
Gee was jailed in 2006 for ordering the murder of 36-year-old David Regan, shot dead outside an Old Swan car wash in May, 2004. Since his release, he has gained a following on Youtube, TikTok and Instagram, where he shares sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek videos often warning others not to get involved in drugs or gang crime.
The video, which included discussion of the ongoing murder trial and a description of a previous meeting Gee claimed to have had with Cashman, was later removed from YouTube.
In a livestream on Thursday, March 16, Gee told viewers the video would not be available until after the trial had finished.
He said: “So, I got spoke to by the law yesterday night, they asked me to remove the content. I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. I felt obliged because I didn’t want to jeopardise anything going on in the trial.”
Gee said he was “not clickbaiting”, although the stream was “hitting numbers that none of my other content’s hit so far”.
He said: “If the family get to see this, I apologise for putting any more stress upon your shoulders with regards to the content I put out, it was not on purpose, it weren’t to jeopardise nothing.”
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