Moment man accused of Ashley Dale's murder is arrested at Glastonbury festival
10.10.2023 - 06:51
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Footage showed the moment a man accused of organising Ashley Dale's murder was found with a knife on his way to Glastonbury Festival.
The video was shown to jurors during the second week of the trial of six men in relation to the 28-year-old's death at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday (October 9). Ashley, an environmental health officer for Knowsley Council, was killed after she was shot on August 21 last year.
James Witham, now 41, has admitted kicking through the front door of Ashley's home in Leinster Road, Old Swan, in the early hours of the day she was killed, the Liverpool Echo reports. Witham accepts opening fire with a Skorpion sub-machine gun and firing the bullet that killed Ashley, but will claim he did not see or hear her and was attempting to 'send a message' to her boyfriend, 25-year-old Lee Harrison, who was not at home.
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He has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder. Last week the jury heard the prosecution case is that Witham and a second man, Joseph Peers, were 'dispatched' to kill Harrison by three men - Niall Barry, 26; Sean Zeisz, 28; and Ian Fitzgibbon, 28 - who were allegedly directing the hit from a flat in Pilch Lane, Huyton.
Yesterday, the jury was shown footage from a body-worn camera depicting the arrest of Witham on June 25, 2022, in Pilton near the site of the Glastonbury festival. Earlier Paul Greaney, KC, prosecuting, described how Witham and Barry had been travelling to the festival site in a taxi when they were pulled over by Avon and