Ashley Dale’s drug-dealing boyfriend is jailed – three years after she was shot dead to ‘send him message’ in gang war

ASHLEY Dale's drug-dealer boyfriend has been jailed - three years after she was shot dead to "send him a message" in a gang attack. The council worker, 28, was "deliberately and mercilessly" blasted with a Skorpion sub-machine gun in a cold-blooded killing in August 2022.

Her killers had been on the hunt for boyfriend Lee Harrison, who was the intended target of the revenge hit. Harrison, who refused to co-operate with police following the horror, is now behind bars for drug offences. Liverpool Crown Court heard he was jointly in control of a crack cocaine and heroin supply line.

Harrison and co-accused Terence Rice were stopped in a BMW X3 after travelling into Liverpool through the Wallasey tunnel on November 25. Police searching the car found a Nokia that revealed the drug ring had sold Class As on at least 247 occasions, with a street value of up to £22,230.

Officers later discovered cocaine worth up to £11,900 in the home Harrison shared with his mum. He was today jailed for five years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to supply. Stephen McNally, defending Harrison, touched on Ashley's murder in mitigation.

He said: "This offending came on the back of a difficult period in his life for reasons which he does not wish me to ventilate in open court, which I stress he does not claim excuse any of his offending. "He suffered a significant bereavement in his life. Following that he lost his employment, lost his home, returned to living with his mother and had to claim benefits to make ends meet.".

Ashley was murdered in her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, after settling in to watch TV with her dog. She screamed "get the f**k out" at gunman James Witham and attempted to "run for her life" after he forced open the front door. Ashley managed to stagger into her back garden where she collapsed after a bullet, one of 10 fired by Witham, tore through her abdomen causing "catastrophic" damage.

Witham then fired a further five bullets into the wall of an upstairs bedroom - a "firm message" to her boyfriend Harrison. The chilling crux of the warning was that he had been the "principle target" of the attack and should be lying dead alongside his partner, the court was told.

Witham, 41, Niall Barry, 26, Sean Zeisz, 28, and Joseph Peers, 28, were previously jailed for life for murder. They were also convicted of conspiracy to murder Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and ammunition.

Harrison had fallen out with rival drug dealer Barry - with tensions boiling over after a clash at Glastonbury two months before Ashley's death. This "deeply humiliating" attack had "reignited" a feud between his gang and Harrison that left Ashley fearing the worst.

Just weeks before her death, she told a pal: "I am looking over my shoulder all the time.”. Harrison had left Ashley alone in their house on the night of the murder. Her murderers had strict instructions to "kill [Harrison] and deal with anyone that got in their way".

Following her death, Harrison refused to speak to the police and claimed he had no idea why Ashley would be targeted. He continued to remain totally uncooperative throughout the trial and "vehemently" denied he was under threat. Ashley's mum previously blamed her daughter’s boyfriend for her murder.

Jule Dale said: "I'm very, very angry towards him. "Some days I feel like I'm more angry towards him than I am to the person who's actually killed Ashley because without Lee Harrison this wouldn't have happened.". Julie said that Harrison’s behaviour in the wake of Ashley’s murder had added to her family’s pain.

The mum continued: “The way he's acted since this has happened has been absolutely despicable, it really, really has. “We've had no remorse from him. We've had no support from him. We have no admittance that it's anything to do with him. “He's given us any number of reasons of what he's heard it’s to do with and none of them include him and he still carries on, you know, going about his life, leaving the country, going on holidays, lording it up, shall we say, like nothing’s happened and nothing’s changed for him and it’s absolutely disgusting, it really is.”.