Thomas Cashman has not appeared in the dock. His barrister, speaking in the courtroom said he Cashman won’t be appearing.
Mrs Justice Yip will sentence in his absence.
In the aftermath of the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, police issued a stark warning about the increasingly deadly weapons circulating on Britain’s streets.
Gangs in Merseyside are using battlefield submachine guns capable of firing 850 rounds a minute to target each other, and it will not be long before such weapons are as common in other areas, officers have warned.
DCS Mark Kameen, the lead investigator on the Olivia Pratt-Korbel case, said Czech-manufactured Skorpion machine pistols were increasingly being used by criminals.
Kameen said:
If you start bringing that sort of battlefield military weaponry into communities and discharging it … You add that to the chaotic nature, lack of training, no moral compass, that’s where you get now the last three times a Skorpion has been used in Merseyside someone’s been killed every single time. Is it any wonder when this gun’s firing 12 or 13 rounds in less than a second?
Merseyside police have seized seven guns since the beginning of the year, including a Skorpion.
Nine-year-old Olivia was not killed by a Skorpion – she was shot with a revolver that was never recovered – but three other people gunned down in Liverpool last year were. Like Olivia, at least two of these were not the intended target of the gunman.
Read more from our story from last Thursday here:
The sentencing hearing will start shortly at Manchester crown court.
First, the court will hear submissions from the prosecution on sentencing guidelines, followed by any mitigation from Cashman’s defence.
The trial was due to take place in Merseyside, but was moved to Manchester because Cashman felt he would not get a fair hearing in Liverpool, where tensions ran high after the killing.
Robyn Vinter
When nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot by a masked gunman who burst into her home on 22 August last year, people in Liverpool feared history was repeating itself.
Fifteen years to the day previously an innocent child had been caught in the crossfire. Eleven-year-old Rhys Jones, walking home from football practice, was gunned down.
The community once again felt brutalised as details of the crime emerged. The gunman and Joseph Nee, the man he was chasing, were strangers to Olivia and her mother, Cheryl Korbel, who had opened the front door that night after hearing noises on the street. Korbel was shot through the hand with the same bullet that killed her daughter. For the funeral, four family members carried Olivia to the local church in Dovecot in a small pink coffin.
Unlike in the Rhys Jones case, where for almost a year police knew who was responsible but could not summon the evidence despite months of agonising family appeals, someone did come forward.
The Crown Prosecution Service managed to produce a star witness, a woman whose house Thomas Cashman fled to after the killing. The witness, who has lifetime anonymity, is understood to have faced more threats than any other witness Merseyside police have dealt with.
She is a former lover of Cashman, from the same area, and someone he trusted. She told the court how he turned up after shooting Olivia, asking for a change of clothes and saying something to the effect of: “I’ve done Joey.”
Thomas Cashman is facing life in prison after being found guilty of murdering nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in a shooting that repulsed Britain.
Last week, Cashman, 34, was convicted of killing the “unique, chatty” little girl who had been getting ready to go to bed when he burst into her family home in Liverpool last August.
Read more on the verdict from last Thursday here:
Hello and welcome to our live blog covering the sentencing of Thomas Cashman, who faces life imprisonment with a minimum term of 30 years after being found guilty of murdering nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in a shooting that repulsed Britain.
Cashman, 34, was convicted of killing the “unique, chatty” little girl who had been getting ready to go to bed when he burst into her family home in Liverpool last August.
In 2022, Olivia was standing behind her mother when Cashman opened fire while chasing Joseph Nee, who had sought refuge inside after seeing that the door was open. She was fatally struck by a single bullet that had gone through the door and the hand of her mother, Cheryl Korbel.
Cashman sobbed in the dock as he was also found guilty of attempting to murder Nee, wounding Korbel with intent by shooting her through the hand, and two counts of possessing firearms. Last week, the jury deliberated for around nine hours.
Today’s sentencing at Manchester crown court begins at 2 pm.
