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The guy convicted of killing Olivia Pratt-Korbel has been sentenced to death.
At Manchester Crown Court today (March 30), a jury of 10 men and 2 women found Thomas Cashman guilty of the nine-year-old’s murder, which was alleged to have occurred last year.
On August 22, Olivia perished after a stray gunshot entered her family’s house on Kingsheath Avenue in Dovecot, Liverpool, through the front door, striking her mother Cheryl Korbel in the hand before striking her in the chest.
In addition, Cashman was held responsible for the attempted murder of Joseph Nee, the intended victim of the shooting, as well as the injury of Olivia’s mother Cheryl Korbel, 46, and two charges of weapon possession with the purpose to imperil life.
According to testimony given in court, the shooter was pursuing 36-year-old Nee, who crashed through the home’s front door as he ran from him.
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The distraught woman described the minutes after her daughter was struck by the stray bullet in a recording of a police interrogation that was presented before the court earlier this month.
I was unable to keep her alert. I noticed she must have been hit because her eyes went to the back of her head and she became all floppy. I raised her top up and saw that the gunshot had struck her in the centre of the breast, Ms. Korbel said while crying.
Merseyside Police earlier determined that a.38 calibre revolver and a Glock 9mm pistol were both used in the attack.
In court last week, Cashman acknowledged that he distributed drugs, but claimed that he “was not a bad drug dealer who sold Class A drugs.”
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On Tuesday (March 28), John Cooper, KC, the defence attorney, concluded his closing remarks by stating that “there were others who wanted Joseph Nee dead” and that the prosecution was “squeezing the evidence to make it fit,” a practise he dubbed “Cinderella syndrome.”
“You may think it really is the prosecution tailoring its theory to fit what evidence they have. Circumstantial evidence of a particularly strong variety can assist,” he said, “but that’s if it is strong in the first place. To put it bluntly, zero plus zero equals zero.
“That circumstantial evidence has to have some quality to it. But it is weak and of no assistance to you whatsoever, and in many respects defies logic.”
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