Partner of Homicide Victim Pleads Guilty to Drug Conspiracy

The individual identified as the boyfriend of a woman who was fatally shot in Merseyside has admitted to charges of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. Ashley Dale, 28, died in August 2022 when an armed assailant forcibly entered her residence in Old Swan, Liverpool. This event followed a dispute between her attackers and her boyfriend, Lee Harrison. Harrison confessed to conspiring to supply heroin and crack cocaine, as well as possessing cocaine with the intent to distribute, during his appearance at Liverpool Crown Court. Judge Brian Cummings adjourned the proceedings, scheduling the sentencing for February 21. Harrison’s arrest took place on November 25, after a vehicle he was in was stopped by law enforcement officers on Jennifer Avenue in the city. The court was informed that Harrison, 27, and his co-accused Terence Rice, 36, were accused of conspiring with each other and “other persons unknown” to provide Class A drugs between October 1 and November 26. A trial held last year revealed that Harrison, of Liverpool Road, Huyton, had been “totally uncooperative” with police following his partner’s murder. Ms. Dale, an environmental health worker for Knowsley Council, was shot by James Witham, 42, who discharged a Skorpion submachine gun inside her home. He fired ten bullets in her dining room, with one striking Ms. Dale in the abdomen as she stood by the back door, and five rounds hitting the wall of an upstairs bedroom. Subsequently, Witham and his co-defendants Joseph Peers, 29, Niall Barry, 26, and Sean Zeisz, 28, were convicted of her murder. Evidence presented during the trial indicated that Harrison was the intended target of the shooting, a consequence of an ongoing dispute with Barry that had reignited at the Glastonbury festival in June 2022. Rice, Harrison’s co-defendant from Bearwood Road, Kirkby, entered a guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to supply crack cocaine and heroin and is also scheduled for sentencing on the identical date. Information regarding BBC Radio Merseyside content can be accessed on Sounds, and updates from BBC Merseyside are available on platforms such as Facebook, X, and Instagram. Story ideas may also be submitted to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk. This material is subject to copyright by the BBC in 2024, with all rights reserved. The BBC bears no responsibility for the content found on external websites and provides details concerning its policy on external linking.