42 years. 504 months. 15,330 days. 367,920 hours. 22,075,200 minutes.
But if you think Thomas Cashman will spend even one of his 1,324,512,000 seconds in jail reflecting or feeling sorry for what he’s done… then you haven’t been paying attention.
From the moment he shot nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel dead, he has proved himself to be the ultimate coward.
His no-show at court yesterday was seemingly a final insult to a family whose lives he has torn apart. But it was an insult which Olivia’s family rose above.
Cheryl Korbel spoke of a “beautiful, sassy, chatty girl who never ran out of energy” – her “little shadow” and her “little love”. John Pratt mourned the moments he will now never see – Olivia’s prom night, walking his daughter down the aisle or seeing her become a mum.
Chloe Korbel missed the little things, the baby sister she doted on stealing her clothes.
Every day, over the past month, each member of Olivia’s family has summoned up unbelievable levels of courage to sit in that courtroom mere metres from the bare-faced liar who took her away from them.
Cashman is incapable of even comprehending the strength they have shown.
This is a man so morally bankrupt, so devoid of any conscience that he did not think twice about blindly pumping bullets into the home of total strangers, despite hearing Cheryl’s terrified screams.
Every single time a gun is fired on a residential street, we run the risk of another Olivia Pratt-Korbel, another Rhys Jones.
If there is any sense of moral superiority among those gang members who enforce their criminal enterprises down the barrel of a gun, they should know they are one stray bullet away from rotting in the cell next door to Cashman.
In her victim impact statement, Cheryl revealed how Olivia, so proud of her long, brown hair, was due to have it cut off just five days after her death – choosing to donate it to the Little Princess Trust, a charity which makes wigs for children who have lost their own hair through illness.
What a brave little girl. And Thomas Cashman – a coward.
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