A weekday stroll past the busy row of shops in Dovecot's Pilch Lane reveals little to suggest this was the place where a dangerous crime group based themselves to plot one of the city's most shocking murders in a generation.
Convenience shops, a café, takeaways, a bookies, bakery, barbers and even a bridal shop mean a steady flow of customers pull up in their cars or stroll up from the surrounding estates. But this is also an area with links to some devastating tragedies.
It was only a few hundreds yards along the same road that nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel went to school, and also where she was laid to rest. A day before Olivia was shot dead in her home, a short distance away in Kingsheath Avenue, the wheels were being set in motion for a separate but chillingly similar tragedy.
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It was in a nondescript flat above a pharmacy, number 267 Pilch Lane, that four men smoked cannabis together and schemed to take the life of a rival gang member, 25-year-old Lee Harrison.
It was from the door to that flat, between the Numark pharmacy and Thatchairs hair salon, that a two man hit team consisting of James Witham, 41, and Joseph Peers, 29, emerged at around 10.10pm on August 20 last year. The men, dispatched by gang boss Niall Barry, 26, and his right-hand man Sean Zeisz, 28, walked over to Wyndham Avenue where Witham had earlier parked a grey Hyundai i30 N Performance car.
Just over two hours later, Witham barged through the front door of a terraced house in Leinster Road, Old Swan, where Harrison lived with his long-term girlfriend, Knowsley Council environmental health officer Ashley Dale. The drug-dealer was not home, and instead it was innocent Ashley, sat in her pyjamas with her dachshund, Dahla, who was confronted with a man in a balaclava wielding a Skorpion sub-maching gun.
Witham chased down Ashley, who screamed 'get the f*** out', and sprayed the downstairs of the house with a burst of around 10 bullets. Ashley was struck in the abdomen as she tried to scramble out of her back door, and collapsed in her back yard with catastrophic injuries.
Witham left her to die and ran upstairs, where he let off a second burst into the wall of a bedroom, before fleeing the scene with Peers. It was back to number 267 that those two men returned, hence why the flat was sealed off by Merseyside Police for around two weeks after the murder investigation began to gather pace.
Merseyside Police were adamant from very early in the investigation into Olivia's murder that the two cases were not directly linked. That fact, some may think, offers a chilling insight into the firearms culture that has permeated a small cross-section of the Huyton and Dovecot underworld.
Of the six most recent fatal shootings in Merseyside – the murders of Olivia, Ashley and in 2021 Patrick Boyle – all have their roots in fall-outs surrounding the Knowsley and Liverpool border. The notorious shooting of 17-year old James Meadows, known as Froggy, in 2017 also took place in Huyton.
But during a weekday, the shops on Pilch Lane feels like a normal community hub, and it seems Barry and his crew operated out of sight, squirrelled away in the first floor flat, growing cannabis in a spare room.
Most people the ECHO spoke to this week did not know the four men who came and went from the flat many times in the weeks before the murder of Ashley. One resident living nearby said: "We all saw the police coming in and out, we didn't know what it was about. When we realised it was linked to the murder, it was a shock. I didn't know anything about the lads living there."
One elderly couple, who have lived along Page Moss Lane for over half a century, had little direct knowledge of the older men deep into the world of serious, organised crime. However, in their view, the behaviour of some of the younger generation is a deep concern.
"Somebody threw something at the window last week", the woman, aged in her 80s, told the ECHO. "We just heard a big thump. It's in the alley outside, they always hang around there.
"They are terrorising the area. You see them up and down on their bikes doing wheelies right across the road. I don't like to go out at night, if you say anything you get a whole load of abuse, it's terrible. They all used to smoke whatever, and you see the laughing gas canisters on the road, but that has reduced a bit since they banned it.
"They are a menace. There's one lad, he's only small and he's about 14, but he's horrible. When he gets older I dread to think what he will be like."
For that resident, who did not wish to be named for obvious reasons, this low level anti-social behaviour is where the journey into serious gang culture begins. When asked about the murders of Olivia and Ashley, both of which had their origins in the local underworld, she said: "I think it's disgusting, a child? I have grandchildren and great grandchildren. What the hell are they growing up to? We could go out and walk around and feel safe, they have got no life outside of their phones and computers."
Some people looks visibly uncomfortable when asked about the events in the flat. But most people appeared to feel content living in the streets just off the shops there. One woman, whose daughter attended the same school as Olivia, said: "We haven't lived here for long but it's been absolutely fine."
Another resident, who was preparing to get ready for work, said: "We saw all the activity on Pilch Lane when the police were there, but we don't get involved in anything like that. It's ok round here, you get the kids hanging around the shops. But when we realised what it was we were surprised."
The positive news since the murders of Olivia, Ashley and the fatal shootings of Sam Rimmer, Jacqui Rutter and Elle Edwards in 2022, is that firearms discharges in Merseyside have dropped drastically. Last year there were 49 including the fatalities. In 2023, there were 11, without a single fatality.
In a recent interview, Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy described how reducing the tolerance for organised crime in communities like Dovecot is a key priority for the force. A Home Office backed strategy, known as Clear, Hold, Build, has been employed in areas blighted by organised crime to remove criminal gangs, prevent new ones moving into the void and then build the resilience of local communities against criminal activity.
In Knowsley, the force is attempting to deliver that strategy through Operation Evolve. CC Kennedy said: "I think the results of that really hard edged pursue activity we have done to tackle Serious and Organised Crime and tackle firearms crime speaks for itself I think the work we have done around Clear, Hold, Build and Operation Evolve has been really positive.
"So you look at the work we did in Dovecot in relation to Operation Evolve, after the murder of Olivia, 420 people were arrested during that really short period of time, and at that time the communities of Dovecot were saying they didn't want to let their children play out on the street for understandable reasons for the tragic way in which Olivia lost her life, but the work we have done with the community, and with partners around the hold and build.
"So for me the really important bit around that is listening to what the community tell us around what the issues and challenges are that they are living with, and what they are facing on a daily basis, and how we at Merseyside Police but also working with our partners can then work with them to help them problem-solve it themselves or indeed do the work that we need to do."