Ashley Dale: Drug dealer threatened victim's partner, trial hears

The trial has heard Ashley Dale was not the intended target of the shooting

A drug dealer accused of murdering Ashley Dale in Liverpool had threatened her boyfriend in the month beforehand, a court has heard.

Miss Dale, 28, was shot in her home in the Old Swan area of the city.

Liverpool Crown Court has heard she was not the intended target as a gunman burst in looking for her partner Lee Harrison.

Niall Barry, 26, one of five men accused murder, told the court he had phoned and threatened Mr Harrison.

Miss Dale was shot with a Skorpion machine gun in the early hours of 21 August last year after an alleged feud between Mr Harrison and the five accused men.

Giving evidence, Mr Barry, told the court he had been friends with Mr Harrison.

But he said they had stopped speaking in 2018 or 2019 because Mr Harrison was "hanging round" with people who had stolen £30,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis from him.

Phone records showed Mr Barry had spoken to Mr Harrison twice on 26 July.

He said he had phoned him after co-defendant James Witham, 41, said Mr Harrison had mentioned Mr Barry's name in an argument about the theft of drugs.

Asked what he said to Mr Harrison during the phone call, Mr Barry told the court: "I said I'll come round the estate and I'll punch your head in."

Stan Reiz KC, defending Mr Barry, asked: "That was a threat?"

Mr Barry replied: "Yeah."

Ms Dale was found in the back garden of her home on Leinster Road

The court heard Mr Barry went to the Glastonbury music festival, which was also attended by Miss Dale and Mr Harrison that year.

He said he was told Mr Harrison was there, along with people from a group known as the Hillsiders, who were the people who had robbed Mr Barry.

Mr Barry said his response to being told that was: "I'll stab them up."

He said the threat was not specifically towards Mr Harrison and he was drunk and "shouldn't have said it".

The court heard Mr Barry used the handle Bettertrunk on the EncroChat messaging platform.

'Talking nonsense'

In messages sent on the platform two years earlier, which were read to the court, he also referred to accessing guns.

He said: "I was just talking nonsense basically, I was just basically thinking I was hard. I was young, I was only 22."

He said in April 2020 he had access to a Skorpion machine gun which was in a house that a "drug user was minding".

But he said he never accessed the Skorpion.

The trial has heard that on the night of 20 August, Mr Witham had been with him and other co-defendants Sean Zeisz, 28, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29, at a flat in Pilch Lane, Huyton, which Barry had been using to grow cannabis.

Mr Barry told the court he had asked Mr Witham to leave the flat because he was drunk and trying to order cocaine there.

The court heard Mr Witham and Mr Peers left at 22:10 BST but returned at 01:25 on 21 August.

Mr Barry said Mr Witham seemed "quiet" and later said he had something to tell him, before disclosing he had "shot up" the house of Miss Dale's partner Mr Harrison.

When he asked him why, Mr Barry told the court Mr Witham claimed Mr Harrison had been trying to "rob his graft", referring to a drugs supply line in Wales.

He said the following morning he saw a news story online which said a woman had been killed in a shooting.

He said: "I knew exactly what had gone on.

"My heart sunk at the time, my automatic reaction was that Ashley must have been sitting on the couch or whatever and a bullet had gone through the window and hit Ashley."

'No inkling'

He told the court later that morning he and Mr Zeisz had left the flat with bags of cannabis to sell, before going to see Mr Fitzgibbon and telling him what Mr Witham had done.

He said: "I just didn't want to get caught up in this...

"I was aware he'd done it in his own car and I was aware I'd been in that car a couple days before."

When asked if he, Mr Zeisz or Mr Fitzgibbon had any suggestions about what they might do, Mr Barry said: "To find James and tell him to hand himself in."

The court heard Mr Barry made contact with a man known as Gus, who was helping him with a plan to leave the country.

Asked why, he said: "Just to distance myself from the whole situation to be honest."

Mr Barry was arrested at the Formby Hall hotel on 24 August with more than £10,200 in cash, which he said he had picked up from the sale of cannabis, the jury was told.

He told the court he did not know Mr Witham was planning to carry out the shooting when he left the flat on 20 August.

He said: "If I had any inkling, any idea, that anything like that was going to happen I wouldn't have let him leave that flat, even though he was doing my head in."

Mr Barry said he had never agreed with anyone to murder Mr Harrison.

He added: "I've always got on with Ashley and she was a lovely girl."

The court heard Mr Barry was convicted earlier this year of conspiracy to sell or transfer a prohibited weapon, a sub-machine gun, and had also been convicted of drug supply offences.

Mr Barry, Mr Witham, Mr Zeisz, Mr Fitzgibbon and Mr Peers deny the murder of Miss Dale, conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition.

Mr Witham admits manslaughter. Kallum Radford, 26, denies assisting an offender.

The trial continues.

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