'Ashley was shot where she should have been safe'

Ashley Dale was described as a "rising star" at her job in Knowsley Council

The mother of a woman who was shot dead in her own home said the past three years had been a "living nightmare" on the third anniversary of her murder.

Ashley Dale, 28, was killed when a gunman opened fire in her house in the early hours of 21 August 2022 in the Old Swan area of Liverpool.

Her boyfriend Lee Harrison, whose refusal to co-operate with police after the murder earned him the contempt of Ms Dale's family, had been the intended target of the shooting.

Julie Dale, Ashley's mother, said her daughter had been killed in "the one place where she should have been safe".

"The past three years have been a living nightmare trying to come to terms with what has happened to Ashley and navigating a life and future without her in it," she said.

Ms Dale was killed when James Witham, armed with a Skorpion machine-pistol capable of emptying its magazine in less than a second, fired bullets into her home on Leinster Road.

Outside, getaway driver Joseph Peers waited for Witham to return.

The two-man team had been dispatched by Niall Barry and Sean Zeisz, over an escalating feud with Harrison.

Lee Harrison was associated with the Huyton based Hillsiders organised crime group

The origin of the row turned out to be rooted in a years' old falling out over a burglary at a stash-house controlled by Barry, where drugs worth about £40,000 were stolen.

Harrison was associated with a gang known to police and the local community as the Hillsiders, named after the Hillside area of Huyton where he had grown up, the court heard.

During the murder trial, jurors at Liverpool Crown Court were told that Barry had discovered the Hillsiders had stolen his drugs, and was angry that Harrison refused to weigh in on his behalf.

The row appeared to re-ignite when Barry and his associate Sean Zeisz had a row with Harrison and his friend, Jordan Thompson, at Glastonbury music festival in July 2022.

Things escalated further when a man called Rikki Warnick took his own life later the same month.

Messages between Barry and Zeisz, recovered by police, suggested that they had come to believe that Mr Warnick had been "bullied" by Mr Thompson - a member of the Hillsiders known by his street name Dusty, the trial was told.

Zeisz also discovered Mr Thompson was seeing his ex-girlfriend, the court heard.

Niall Barry ran a drug-trafficking group and plotted the shooting that killed Ashley Dale

It was against this background of organised crime and petty personal slights that Barry and Zeisz formed a plan to harm Harrison - although the exact catalyst was unclear.

Barry, Zeisz, Witham and Peers were all convicted of Ms Dale's murder and were given life sentences with minimum terms between 41 and 47 years.

Harrison was handed a five-year prison sentence in February for selling crack-cocaine and heroin across north-west England and north Wales in 2024.

"After Ashley's murder we were told that crime reporting had risen significantly," said her mother.

"This heinous crime had shaken the community and people had had enough.

"We count ourselves one of the 'lucky' ones as we have been able to get justice for Ashley."

James Witham, left, who fired the sub-machine gun and Joseph Peers, right, were found guilty of murder

Merseyside Police was given funding by the Home Office for an operation called Clear, Hold, Build, known locally as EVOLVE following the death of Ashley, along with nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel and 22-year-old Sam Rimmer.

It was designed to reclaim areas worst affected by serious and organised crime and rebuild safer and stronger communities.

Mrs Dale has joined the campaign - alongside other victims' families - to urge communities to "speak out" against violent crime.

"Sadly, there are families who are still waiting for their justice knowing that their loved one's killers are still out there walking our streets," she said.