Olivia’s brother tells of desperate moment he ‘knew it was over’ as he fought to save her
THE brother of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel ‘knew it was over’ when he realised she had been shot in the chest, a jury heard yesterday.
Speaking to detectives the day after her death, Ryan Korbel told how his sister had run downstairs after hearing gunshots in the street outside, crying out: ‘I’m scared mummy, I’m scared.’
An armed policeman described how the stricken schoolgirl was ‘staring into nothing’ and her body was ‘limp’, saying he scooped her up and took her straight to hospital in his BMW.
Tragically Olivia was pronounced dead soon after they arrived. Her mother Cheryl, 46, had tried to keep the front door of her Liverpool home closed as Joseph Nee – who the prosecution say was the gunman’s intended target – hammered on it to be let in, the murder trial has heard. But alleged gunman Thomas Cashman, 34, fired a shot through the door which struck Mrs Korbel’s hand and Olivia’s chest, jurors heard.
Yesterday the trial at Manchester Crown Court watched a video interview with Ryan Korbel from August 23 last year, the day after the shooting. He described how he was in his bedroom and heard three loud bangs, then ‘footsteps across the landing’ before Olivia ran downstairs.
She screamed: ‘I’m scared mummy, I’m scared.’ He saw her on the stairs, a man lying on the floor and his mother ‘wrestling’ with the door.
He couldn’t remember how many shots were fired in total. Unaware that Olivia had been shot, Mr Korbel said he followed Nee out of the house, ‘screaming abuse’. The gunman had fled, while Nee was picked up by men in an SUV. Mr Korbel said his mother ‘put Liv in my arms and told me to keep pressure on her chest’, adding: ‘I didn’t know why until I lifted her pyjama top up and seen a hole.’ A neighbour then came in and gave her CPR. ‘Her lips had gone blue, she wasn’t even bleeding out the gunshot wound,’ he said. ‘I knew it was over.’
Describing his desperate attempts to keep Olivia alive, the neighbour, Rob Lamb, told how he was watching television when he heard ‘screaming’. ‘I saw Olivia with Cheryl over her saying “Stay with me baby.” I think she then stopped breathing and the operator took me through starting CPR.’
First to respond to the 999 call was armed officer PC Daniel Cooper, who said Mrs Korbel was ‘crying and shouting hysterically’. ‘I then noticed a foot and lower legs of a female child wearing white socks, stained red,’ he said. The prosecution alleged that Cashman was engaged in a ‘ruthless pursuit’ to shoot Nee ‘at all costs’.
The court also heard from his alleged ex-lover, who told police he visited her minutes after the shooting and said he had ‘done Joey’ – said to refer to Joseph Nee – and that ‘it’s all gone wrong’. In a video interview played to the jury, she said Cashman was asking for ‘a pair of pants’, saying he ‘went to drop the bits off before he came to my house’ – which she now believed meant the gun.
She said she called another man round, who drove Cashman to where he’d parked his van before taking away the clothes he had worn.
Cashman, of West Derby, Liverpool, denies the murder of Olivia, the attempted murder of Nee and the wounding with intent of her mother. He also denies two counts of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. The trial continues.
‘I lifted her top up and saw the wound’