HIDDEN mum Ashley Dale today blamed her daughter’s boyfriend for her murder, saying: “Without him this wouldn’t have happened”.
Ashley, 28, was killed on August 21 last year after gunman James Witham burst into her three-bedroom terrace in the Old Swan, Liverpool.
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Ashley Dale was brutally murdered in her own homeCredit: PA
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Her family were forced to hear harrowing details in courtCredit: PA
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They blame Lee Harrison, left with one of her killers, Niall Barry
Witham, 41, forced his way in while armed with a Skorpion submachine gun capable of firing 850 rounds per minute.
Meanwhile, Ashley was sitting on the sofa watching TV in her pajamas with her dachshund, Darla.
He chased her through the house as she screamed to “get the fuck out” and shot her in the back, leaving her to die alone in the back yard.
Witham and other gang members attacked Ashley’s home after falling out with her gang member boyfriend Lee Harrison, whom she had been dating for around six years.
Harrison – a member of the Hillsiders OCG – was at the club in Liverpool city center at the time of the attack and escaped unharmed.
He then refused to cooperate with officers and said he had no idea why he or environmental officer Ashley would be targeted, even though he was friends with some of her killers.
James Witham, 41, Joseph Peers, 29, Niall Barry, 26, and Sean Zeisz, 28, were found guilty of Ashley’s murder at Liverpool Crown Court today.
During the trial, the jury heard that Harrison was visited by officers on several occasions after Ashley’s death, but remained “completely uncooperative” throughout.
During one visit, he refused to get out of bed.
He claimed he had “no idea” why he or Ashley would be targeted and “vehemently denied” being threatened, Liverpool Crown Court was told.
Since her death, he has been a frequent visitor to Dubai.
Speaking after the men were convicted of her daughter’s murder, Julie Dale, 46, spoke of her anger at the behavior of her daughter’s killers and Harrison, their intended target.
Midwife Julie, who lives with Ashley’s stepfather Rob Jones, 39, in Old Swan, said: “I’m very, very angry with him. Some days I feel like I’m more mad at him than the person who actually killed Ashley because without Lee Harrison this wouldn’t have happened.”
The mum-of-two said she made it clear to Ashley that she did not approve of her relationship with Harrison, who is known to police.
She said: “I knew he didn’t have a nine to five job, I wasn’t happy about that. I didn’t fully know what he was doing, but I regularly told Ashley that I wasn’t happy that she was with someone like Lee Harrison.
“What I mean by that is she had so many prospects and aspirations. She just wanted to live a normal life, whatever that was, and he would never be able to do that.
“She kept trying to make him be that person and he never will be.”
Julie added that Harrison’s behavior after Ashley’s callous killing added to her family’s pain, as he offered no support to her family and the police in building a case against her killers.
“The way he’s acted since this happened has been absolutely despicable, he really, really has,” she said.
“We had no remorse from him. We had no support from him. We do not admit that it has anything to do with him.
“He’s given us countless reasons for what he’s heard he’s involved with, and none of them involve him and he’s still going on, you know, living his life, leaving the country, going on vacation, my lords, shall we say, as if nothing happened and nothing changed for him and it’s absolutely disgusting, it really is.”
Quantity Surveyor Rob angrily added that if the police had relied on Harrison to talk to the officers about what he knew, Ashley’s killers would still be on the loose.
He said: “He’s similar to the people who did this in that he just doesn’t want to face the truth and lives his own lies.
“Ashley knew how we felt about Lee, but after all, when she was alone in our house, she never gave us anything to worry about.
“It’s shocking what happened and it goes back to Ashley loving Lee, but Lee quite clearly didn’t love Ashley.
“The manner in which they were treated after that is indescribable, it is disgusting. We are all professionally qualified people, we all had jobs, we would have taken a different path.
“The problem we keep coming back to is that Ashley fell in love with the wrong guy. I’m not saying for a second that Ashley didn’t love him, I’m saying that he doesn’t love her, clearly, by his actions.
“If it had been left up to the defendant and the person who ended up being a conspirator to murder, Lee, this would never have gone to trial if it had been left to it because everybody lies, everybody cheats, everybody steals, I don’t know any other way. “This was not Ashley’s world.”
Julie told how Ashley got her first retail job aged 16 and initially planned to become a nurse before landing a job as an environmental health officer at Knowsley council.
Before her death, she applied for a promotion, which she received, but was then mowed down insensibly by a hail of bullets.
Speaking about reliving her final moments at the trial, Julie said: “It was harder than I expected.
“I thought, in the early days, with some of the things we had to do – the funeral planning and some of the really horrible things we had to do in the beginning, I thought nothing could top them, nothing could be worse, but sitting in court with the defendants and see them and then listen and see the horrific details of what happened to her and how she was essentially left alone to die.
“It’s horrible.”
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Ashley’s parents discovered that she had recently been promotedCredit: PA
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