Elle Edwards' dad has recalled the trauma of identifying her body after she was shot dead last Christmas Eve.
The 26-year-old beautician was an innocent bystander when she was gunned down outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village on Christmas Eve. Her devastated dad Tim, 52, recalled how his son Connor, 30, woke him in the early hours of Christmas by banging on his door.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Mirror, Tim said: “I opened the door and Connor just said: ‘We have to go to the hospital, it’s Elle.’ When we got to Arrowe Park Hospital the surgeon said to me she’d passed away.
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"He said she’d been shot in the head. They put us in a side room at the hospital and I just went ballistic. I smashed the wall up. We couldn’t see Elle so we went home to her mum’s home and I just went and slept in her bed. The day after I had to identify her. I got the chance to speak to her. That was my final goodbye. It was awful.”
Tim was determined to get justice for Elle and appeared at police press conferences within days wearing a Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, a band she loved. He added: "A couple of days before her death, on our last night together, me, Elle and Lucy had gone to Manchester Christmas markets and we ended up back at mine falling asleep listening to Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. And she was singing it."
In July, Connor Chapman was convicted of murder at Liverpool crown court and jailed for a minimum of 48 years. The trial heard how the 23-year-old, armed with a Skorpion submachine gun, had been lying in wait at the pub for three hours for his intended targets, gang rivals Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy.
Elle, who was at the pub with her sister Lucy, 22, went outside for a cigarette and was sitting on a wall opposite Salkeld and Duffy, who she knew but who were not friends. The killer approached from the car park and sprayed 12 shots into the crowd. Tim said: "I had to watch the CCTV of her getting shot before the trial. I’ll never unsee it. Elle was sat on the wall having a fag with her back to that piece of s***.
"The targets he was aiming at were standing in front of Elle and he just sprayed at them. Another six inches up or to the side and she’d still be alive." But as Tim faces a second Christmas Day without his daughter, her death is compounded by the grooming of the new generation of gang gun runners.
Local community groups will be telling kids of nine of the dangers of gang killers but may extend their warnings to children as young as five. Tim said: “It’s terrifying to hear kids this young are being groomed, but it’s becoming more and more common. My grandson is four now. In a few years one of his friends could be one of these kids. The children being groomed into gangs now will be the ones using guns in the future."
Tim called the Skorpion submachine gun an indiscriminate killing machine – and added: "It’s sort of becoming the norm for kids to have guns. There’s always been gun violence in Merseyside. But when I was younger you would never hear about kids getting their hands on guns.”
In the new year, community group Weapons Down Gloves Up will expand its e-course schemes to nine-year-olds. But director Chris Nisbet is considering going into Merseyside schools to warn pupils as young as five after a teacher told him she had seen kids that age being lured by gangs outside the gates. Tim slammed the government for cutting youth services and neglecting communities, leaving kids vulnerable to gangs.
He added: "They haven’t got many options. They have nowhere to go. They want things and see the drugs trade as easy money."
Gun crime is a nationwide problem. The number of gun offences rose from 570 in the first half of 2021 to 850 over the same period in 2022, Home Office figures reveal. Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne said: "As a country, there’s a massive lack of opportunity.
"Speaking to some youngsters, it feels there is an air of desolation with opportunities being denied them and that’s fertile ground for the criminals to offer money." Tim has set up the Elle Edwards Foundation to support families who have lost loved ones to gun crime.
He is also urging parents to bar kids from video games that “glorify violence” such as Grand Theft Auto. The game’s maker did not comment. Tim has been in touch with the family of Ashley Dale, who was shot dead in her Liverpool home with a Skorpion last year. Four men have been jailed for her murder. Now Tim says he will walk in Scotland at Christmas as “it is not a cause for celebration for me any more”.
A government spokesman said last year it increased core spending for local authorities by £5.1bn. They are legally obliged to allocate some of this to youth services.
To donate to the Elle Edwards Foundation, visit gofundme.com/f/elles-army.