Neighbours heard screams as council worker was shot in her home

Neighbours have described hearing screams as a 28-year-old council worker was shot in her home.

Environmental health worker Ashley Dale was killed in her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in the early hours of August 21 last year after gunman James Witham, who admits manslaughter, kicked down her front door.

Witham, 41, and four other defendants – Niall Barry, 26, Sean Zeisz, 28, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29 – deny her murder, which is alleged to have happened following a feud with her partner Lee Harrison.

At Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday, neighbours of Miss Dale, who cannot be named for legal reasons, gave evidence about the night of the shooting.

One woman said she had been in her bedroom watching television at about 12.30am when she heard a “loud drilling noise” which lasted two to three seconds.

She said she paused her television and heard another drilling noise.

She added: “I heard a girl scream, then I heard her scream again saying ‘get the f*** out’.”

She said the scream was “really loud”.

One resident said she heard a “metallic crash”.

She said: “I went up to the back door because I thought I’d heard somebody say in a very soft, faint voice ‘help me, help me’.”

She said the voice sounded like it belonged to a young woman who was “in pain”.

But, the woman said when she went out into the back yard everything was “totally silent”.

Another neighbour said she was in bed when she heard “a loud bang” and then “a scream”.

She told the court: “I’d say five or six seconds later there was another scream but it was nowhere near as loud as the first.”

A third woman described hearing a bang which sounded like someone shutting the lid of a wheelie bin, followed by two bangs which sounded like gunshots or fireworks and, immediately after, a female scream.

Asked what mood the person who was screaming appeared to be in, the woman said: “Scared.”

The court heard from Pc Christopher Sinnott, who was one of the first officers at the house after the shooting.

Pc Sinnott said in the dining room of the home he saw bullet holes on the wall and ceiling and noticed a dog in the corner of the room.

He said: “It was cowering in the corner in its bed.”

The officer, whose colleague found Miss Dale in the back yard, said he counted eight to 10 bullet casings in the property.

On Tuesday, the court was shown a selfie which Miss Dale sent to a friend less than an hour before her death with her dachshund Darla.

Witham, of Huyton; Fitzgibbon, of St Helens; Zeisz of Huyton; Barry, of Tuebrook; and Peers, of Roby – all Merseyside – deny conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition, as well as the murder of Miss Dale.

Kallum Radford, 26, of no fixed address, denies assisting an offender.

The trial will continue on Wednesday.