The murder of Ashley Dale came just under seven years after her ‘gentle, peace-loving’ half-brother was killed after being shot in a case of mistaken identity.
Lewis Dunne, 16, had been walking along the Leeds-Liverpool canal in Eldonian Village, Merseyside, in November 2015, when he was mistaken for a member of a rival gang by brothers Paul and John Martin, and their accomplice, Jake Culshaw.
The trio mistook the innocent teen because he had similar ‘curly hair’ to the man they were trying to attack.
The drug-dealing killers were sentenced to 88 years behind bars in November 2016, a year after Lewis died from a single shotgun blast.
When the group was sentenced, Lewis’s devastated mother Gemma Whitfield, told Liverpool Crown Court: ‘Lewis was my baby. I was 20 when he came into my life, young myself but already older than he would get to be.
Lewis Dunne, 16, had been walking along the Leeds-Liverpool canal in Eldonian Village, Merseyside, when he was mistaken for a gangster
The murder of Ashley Dale (right) came just under seven years after her ‘gentle, peace-loving’ half-brother (left) was killed
The trio mistook the innocent teen because he had similar ‘curly hair’ to the man they were trying to attack
Ashley Dale was shot just under seven years on from her ‘peace-loving’ half-brother
‘From the moment I held him in my arms I felt love. Lewis was the embodiment of what was good and right in this world.
‘Despite being the baby of the family, Lewis had an emotional maturity from a young age. Lewis was a gentle peace-loving boy, vibrant and oh so alive, but now he is dead.’
She added: ‘The pain and confusion he must have gone through… the confusion and the despair… it will never leave me, I will never be able to understand.
‘Grief is a lonely place, grief caused by murder is even lonelier.
‘For those of us who love him nothing has been the same since he was taken from us.’
Four men were found guilty of Ms Dale’s murder yesterday.
Hitman James Witham, 41, his driver Joseph Peers, 29, along with Niall Barry, 26, and Sean Zeisz, 28, who orchestrated the murder from a nearby flat, face life sentences for the killing of Ashley Dale, 28, in August last year.
During a six-and-a-half-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, jurors heard how Barry ordered the attack after a long-running spat with Ms Dale’s boyfriend Lee Harrison, 26, reignited at the Glastonbury Festival.
Ms Dale with her mother, Julie, who has slammed both her murderers and her daughter’s boyfriend, Lee Harrison
Ms Dale in a family photo alongside her father, Steve. Her family were in court to see her killers convicted today
Today, Ms Dale’s mother Julie said she was ‘more angry’ towards Harrison than the hitman himself, adding: ‘Without Lee Harrison this wouldn’t have happened.’
Despite the guilty verdicts and hefty prison sentences that will follow, she added: ‘In my eyes that there’ll never be justice. For me, the only justice would have been that this wouldn’t have happened.’
The case is believed to be the first in British legal history to use the recorded testimony of the victim from beyond the grave – in the form of hundreds of voice notes sent by Ashley to her friends describing the feud – to secure convictions.
Barry, who jurors heard ran a County Lines drugs ring, had fallen out with Harrison three years earlier over the alleged theft of drugs.
But at the Glastonbury Festival in 2022, his close associate and fellow drug dealer Zeisz was beaten up by a group including Harrison’s friend, Jordan Thompson, who the court heard was a member of a rival organised crime group, the Hillsiders.
To compound Zeisz’s ‘loss of face’, after he wandered off, his then girlfriend Olivia McDowell went to stay with Ashley and Harrison at the festival, before later splitting with him and developing a relationship with Thompson, 20.
James Witham and Niall Barry are among four men who were today found guilty of murdering council worker Ashley Dale
Sean Zeisz and Joseph Peers were also found guilty of murdering Ms Dale and conspiracy to murder her partner, Lee Harrison
The feud escalated in the weeks that followed and a hit was planned with Harrison the intended target.
There were calls of ‘yes’ from Ms Dale family, including mother Julie Dale and her partner Rob Jones, who shared hugs of relief in the public gallery as the guilty verdicts were returned.
But Zeisz’s father shouted obscenities.
The four men were also convicted of conspiracy to murder Harrison and of conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
