Drug dealer threatened Ashley Dale's boyfriend weeks before her death

Ashley Dale, 28, was shot dead in her home with a Skorpion machine gun in Old Swan, Liverpool. Credit: Family photo

A drug dealer accused of murdering a council worker had threatened to attack her boyfriend in the weeks before her death, a court has heard.

Ashley Dale, 28, was shot in her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, on 21 August 2022, after an alleged feud between her partner Lee Harrison and the five men accused of her murder.

Niall Barry, 26, told Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday he had been friends with Mr Harrison but he had stopped speaking to him in 2018 or 2019.

He said Mr Harrison was "hanging round" with people who had stolen £30,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis from him.

Mr Barry went on to tell the court he had phoned him after co-defendant, James Witham, 41, said Mr Harrison had mentioned Barry’s name in an argument about the theft of drugs.

Asked what he said to Mr Harrison during the phone call, Barry told the court: “I said ‘I’ll come round the estate and I’ll punch your head in’.”

Stan Reiz KC, defending Barry, asked: “That was a threat?”

Barry replied: “Yeah.”

Phone records on 26 July, a month before the death of Ashley Dale, show Barry spoke to Mr Harrison twice on the phone.

Ashley Dale worked as an Environmental Health officer at Knowsley Council. Credit: Family photograph

The court heard Barry went to Glastonbury festival 2022, which was also attended by Miss Dale and Mr Harrison.

He said while at the festival he was told Mr Harrison was there, along with people from group the Hillsiders, who were the people who had robbed Barry.

Barry said his response to being told that was: “I’m not arsed about them, I’ll stab them up”.

He said the threat was not specifically towards Mr Harrison and he was drunk and “shouldn’t have said it”.

The court heard Barry used the handle Bettertrunk on messaging platform EncroChat.

In messages sent on the platform, which were read to the court, he also referred to accessing guns.

He said: “I was just talking nonsense basically, I was just basically thinking I was hard. I was young, I was only 22.”

He said in April 2020, when the messages were sent, he had access to a Skorpion machine gun which was in a house that a “drug user was minding”.

But he said he never accessed the Skorpion.

Ms Dale told her friends she was nervous about the unfolding situation. Credit: Family photograph

The court heard in the summer last year he was supplying cannabis and cocaine, in kilo amounts, to people in areas including North Wales.

Barry said he was convicted earlier this year of conspiracy to sell or transfer a prohibited weapon, a sub-machine gun, and had also been convicted of drug supply offences.

Barry, Witham, Sean Zeisz, 28, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29, deny the murder of Miss Dale, conspiracy to murder Mr Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition.

Witham admits manslaughter.

Kallum Radford, 26, denies assisting an offender.