£200,000 Reward in hunt for Olivia killer as gun is linked to crimes
A GuN linked to the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel was used in two other shootings, detectives said yesterday.
The revelation came as a £200,000 reward was offered to catch the killer of the nine-year-old.
Crimestoppers said the sum was double its previous record – offered following the murder of gangster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer in 2015.
Olivia’s killer fired two guns and one was used in two non-fatal attacks in Liverpool – one of them just two weeks before her death.
Yesterday Merseyside Police pleaded with residents to ‘tell us where the guns are’ and to help them take the ‘toxic’ killer off the streets.
Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Kameen said: ‘Being involved with this gunman and anything to do with this horrendous murder will leave a stain on you for life. Your loyalty to this man is utterly misplaced and it will cost you.
‘This man is utterly toxic to our communities. Nobody wants this man around them or where they live. Some people may tolerate him through fear, but even those people, given the choice, would want him locked away.
‘ There are people in our communities right now that
know where the weapons are. There is £200,000 available for information. Please tell us where those guns are.
‘Tell us whose house they are in, what open land, whose garden they are in, whose responsible for moving them. Let us go and recover them so they can never be used again.’
Olivia was shot in the chest four weeks ago when the gunman, who was chasing convicted burglar and drug dealer Joseph Nee, 35, burst into her home, in Dovecot, Liverpool, firing indiscriminately.
Her mother, Cheryl, 46, was hit in the wrist as she tried to shut her front door and the bullet also struck Olivia standing behind her.
The youngster was taken to hospital but could not be saved. Neither the gunman nor his target had any links to Olivia’s family.
Police have arrested nine people in connection with the attack on August 22 but no one has been charged.
Yesterday they revealed that one of their lines of inquiry was that the gunman was a hitman sent to execute Nee. The National Ballistics Intelligence Service has identified his two weapons. The first, a .38 revolver was fired twice with one of the bullets killing Olivia. The second, a Glock-type self-loading 9mm pistol, was fired three times and had been used in two other shootings – one just a fortnight before the attack.
‘The gunman brought two weapons with him, there is a real possibility that this was an assassination and that he was there to carry out an execution,’ Mr Kameen said.
‘Carrying out an execution’