Moment Thomas Cashman flees after killing Olivia Pratt-Korbel, 9, as chilling CCTV shows him blasting intended target
THIS is the moment a cowardly killer flees following the brutal shooting of a nine-year-old girl after gunshots pierced the air.
Olivia Pratt-Korbel was stood behind her mum Cheryl Korbel when Thomas Cashman blindly fired into her house in a botched gang hit.
Cashman, 34, had been attempting to murder Joseph Nee, who had barged his way into the family home after being shot in the street.
Chilling footage released by police today after the gunman was convicted of murder, attempted murder and wounding with intent shows the moment Cashman chased his intended victim down.
Gunshots can be heard shattering the peaceful night air as a horrified witness scarpers.
Cashman then grabs Nee and shoots again before his rival manages to stagger away with the gunman in hot pursuit.
He is later seen fleeing the scene of the bloodbath through the deserted streets of Liverpool.
The shocking killing unfolded on August 22 last year after a “pre-planned and ruthless attack” went “horribly wrong”.
Olivia was stood behind her mum Cheryl Korbel when Cashman blindly fired into the home in a botched gang hit.
The youngster had moments earlier run terrified from her bedroom after hearing the commotion, screaming: “Mum, I’m scared”.
Cheryl had opened her door to see what was going on when intended hit Nee attempted to barge his way in.
Cashman then opened fire – with the bullet missing Nee and instead travelling through the front door and Cheryl’s hand before hitting little Olivia in the chest.
Cheryl told how her daughter “went all floppy and her eyes went to the back of her head before she said something like sounded like “mum”.
The mum-of-three said she yelled out at her son Ryan to help get Olivia up the stairs as she was trying to stem the blood coming from her own wound.
It was then Cheryl realised the youngster had been hit in the middle of the chest as she desperately “gasped for breath”.
Cheryl’s heartbreaking evidence reduced the courtroom to tears as she told police: “There was just screaming. I heard the gunshot. I realised, because it hit my hand.
“I heard the baby screaming and that’s when I turned round and spotted her sitting at the bottom of the stairs.
“I just huddled over her. I lifted her top. That’s when I realised she’d been shot in the chest.”
As her little girl slipped away in her arms, Cheryl shouted out : “Please Liv, stay with me.”
Sobbing in her police interview, she told officers a neighbour came in to start performing CPR but she “knew she’d gone”.
Tragically, Olivia couldn’t be saved and died in hospital later that night.
Her brother Ryan also told how he heard Olivia run across the landing saying “I’m scared mummy, I’m scared” as Nee was targeted outside the home.
He said he rushed out of his bedroom to find a Nee lying in the hall and his mum “wrestling” with the door.
As it burst open, Ryan said an arm came round wielding a black handgun as up to two more shots rang out.
In a cruel twist, as the youngster’s family begged Olivia to stay alive in the blood-stained home, Nee stumbled outside and was picked up by five men in a black car after making a call.
Cashman meanwhile had fled the scene, changed his clothes and told a woman he had “done Joey”.
But the gunman wept in court as he claimed he had been “stitched up” over Olivia’s death.
He told jurors: “I’m getting blamed for killing a child and I have got my own children.
“I’m a dad, I’m not a killer, I’m a dad.
“I’m getting blamed for something I haven’t done.”
The “high-level cannabis dealer” said he was smoking a spliff at the time of the shooting and counting around £10,000 in cash with a pal.
Cashman also claimed the woman who said she heard him confess was “trying to ruin his life” because he won’t leave his partner for her.
He said her boyfriend owed him a £25,000 drug debt so she wanted him “out of the way”.
But the court was told Cashman was just trying “pull the wool” over the eyes of jurors.
David McLachlan KC, prosecuting, said it was a “case that shocked not simply a city not too far away from here but also a nation”.
He said: “The news at the time made front page headlines across the country and this is a case which will live with you forever.”
The tragedy was the third fatal shooting in Liverpool in less than a week after a council worker was just killed just two days before.
Ashley Dale, 28, was shot dead just two miles away in her back garden in Old Swan in a case of mistaken identity.
In a separate bloodbath, Sam Rimmer, 22, was shot dead in Toxteth.
Olivia’s death also came 15 years to the day that 11-year-old Rhys Jones was brutally murdered.