Gunman told police he had been ‘stitched up’, court hears

Ashley Dale, 28, was shot at home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in August last year.

James Witham, who has admitted the manslaughter of Ashley Dale, is arrested by police on the M6 in Cumbria (Merseyside Police/PA) (PA Media)

A gunman who killed a council worker in her home told police he had been “stitched up”, a court has heard.

Environmental health worker Ashley Dale, 28, was shot with a Skorpion machine pistol at home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in the early hours of August 21 last year by gunman James Witham, who admits manslaughter.

Witham, 41, and four other defendants, Niall Barry, 26, Sean Zeisz, 28, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29, deny her murder, which is alleged to have happened following a feud with her partner Lee Harrison.

On Thursday, their trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard Witham had been arrested on the M6 in Cumbria on September 13 last year and was taken to a police station in Liverpool where he was interviewed.

He exercised his right to silence in his first two interviews, apart from saying “nothing to do with it mate, not a clue”.

Alex Langhorn, prosecuting, said after a third interview, in which Witham was silent apart from telling police he had size seven feet, he was taken back to his cell and told officers he had been “set up, the car was Davo’s and he’d been told not to say anything”.

Mr Langhorn said: “Mr Witham told them he was being ‘stitched up, it is not right’ and asked to speak to his solicitor.”

He told officers he “did not want to come across as a grass” but said the car belonged to another associate, David McCaig, who had crashed it the day before, and they needed to do more inquiries into it.

Mr Witham’s solicitor spoke to him but then told officers he no longer wanted to talk, the jury heard.

The court was told Zeisz gave a prepared statement when he was interviewed on August 30 last year.

In it, he said he understood he had been arrested as a result of intelligence.

He said: “This intelligence is incorrect and categorically untrue.

“I have nothing to add at this time. I am not involved in this matter.”

In a prepared statement given at a later interview, he said: “I wish to make it clear I am disgusted by what has happened.”

He said on the evening of August 20 he went to buy food from a chip shop in Huyton and was invited to watch a boxing match at a flat on Pilch Lane by Peers, where Witham and Barry were.

He said Witham left with Peers after becoming “rowdy”.

Zeisz told police he rang Peers to ask him to bring back cigarettes.

The pair later returned and Zeisz said he slept at the flat after smoking cannabis.

The prosecution allege the flat was the “centre of operations” for the murder plot.

Witham, of Huyton; Fitzgibbon, of St Helens; Zeisz, of Huyton; Barry, of Tuebrook; and Peers, of Roby – all Merseyside – deny conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition, as well as the murder of Miss Dale.

Kallum Radford, 26, of no fixed address, denies assisting an offender.