Nyle Corrigan: Two men jailed for total of 64 years after killing teenager over £60 debt

Two men who lay in wait to ambush a teenager before shooting him in the back in a "targeted and planned attack" have been jailed for a minimum of 32 years.

Martin Wilson, 37, and Connor Smith, 26, waited “wearing gloves and masks and with their hoods pulled up”, for Nyle Corrigan, 19, pouncing on him as he rode past on his electric bike, at around 6.30pm on 12 November 2020.

Calling out to the teenager in Stockbridge Village, Merseyside, they then fired a shot once in his back, the bullet travelling through Nyle's spine and body causing "catastrophic damage".

Liverpool Crown Court heard further words were exchanged, but no other shot was discharged due to a defect in the 9mm handgun.

Nyle then staggered down the line of some houses but then collapsed and died a short time later.

In the following hours, Jamie Coggins, 28, helped dispose of Smith's clothes and in the days after the shooting, helped him move his belongings from his flat in Reliance House in the city centre to a safe house overlooking the Mersey.

Smith was then driven to Portsmouth by his dad, Mark Sharpe, before he moved to Spain where he remained for three years.

Coggins was cleared of murder, but convicted of assisting an offender by the same jury and was jailed for four years.

Mr Sharpe and his partner Melanie Smith were cleared of assisting an offender by the same jury. The court heard how the tension's rose between Wilson and Nyle’s family after the teenager had an argument with one of Wilson's friends, Liam Cohen, over £60 he believed he was owed.

Messages recovered from social media showed that Nyle’s mum Lesley Kelly made attempts to recover the money.

Using her daughter’s Facebook account, Ms Kelly sent a message asking for £60 off Mr Cohen and a further £20 from Wilson. The messages appeared she needed the money to pay for a special cake for her daughter's impending birthday.

After this exchange, Nyle traded insults with Mr Cohen's partner over Facebook, which lead to a group of men gathering around Martin Wilson and travelling to Little Moss Hey on 11 November 2020.

The court heard that shortly after 9pm, Ms Kelly and her daughter Amelia Corrigan were at home when an Audi 4x4 pulled up at their house and a number of men, “wearing balaclavas and face coverings”, demanded to know where Nyle was.

Mr Wright told the court the group said "Nyle was dead", and when Ms Corrigan left to go to her granddad’s house they followed her in the car and shouted her brother "should not start something if he wasn’t going to finish it".

During the trial, Richard Wright KC, said: "Although the dispute seems to have begun over a modest debt, it has ballooned as a result of Nyle Corrigan having been perceived to overstep the mark in his efforts to recover the money.

"The prosecution say that Martin Wilson in particular appeared to have been incensed and was now leading efforts to teach Nyle Corrigan a lesson."

Sentencing, Mr Justice Goose told the defendants: "Nyle Corrigan was shot and killed by two men who had prepared themselves for the killing.

"They walked a secretive route which brought them to Boode Croft which is where they knew they would find Nyle Corrigan."There they shot him in the back. They then took away the electric bike. Those two men were you Connor Smith and you Martin Wilson.

"A jury has convicted you of the murder, while you Jamie Coggins have been convicted of assisting an offender."

The judge told the three men: "The murder of Nyle Corrigan, who was only 19 when he was killed, has caused his family and those who knew him well profound grief, while the shooting itself caused the local community great shock."

Mr Justice Goose also told the trio there was little mitigation and said through their own evidence given to the court, Smith and Coggins had admitted to being established drug dealers in kilo quantities, with the former supplying heroin and the latter cannabis.

The judge told the two killers that although Wilson was the one who pulled the trigger he treated them as "equally culpable due to the degree of planning and disposal of evidence".

He landed them life sentences, before telling Coggins that his culpability was high as he knew they had carried out a murder.

Speaking outside the court building following the sentencing, Detective Chief Inspector Cath Cummings, who was the Senior Investigating Officer in this investigation, said: “To end the life of a young man over such a petty dispute is beyond comprehension and just serves to highlight the callous actions of these men.

“This was an extremely cowardly attack in which Wilson and Smith hid from Nyle before shooting him in the back as he was on his bike.

“Everyone’s thoughts at Merseyside Police remain with Nyle’s family and friends.

"No sentence, however long, can change what these two men did, but I hope knowing that they have been brought to justice and are now off our streets brings the family some small amount of comfort."