‘It’s a new way of living’, says Olivia Pratt Korbel’s mum four years on

“Life will never be the same,” says the mother of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, four years after her daughter was murdered in their family home.

“It’s just a new way, trying a new way of living.”

Cheryl Korbel was wounded by the same bullet that killed Olivia when it was fired through the front door of their home in Liverpool by drug dealer Thomas Cashman.

Cashman had been trying to kill a fellow criminal, Joseph Nee, who burst into the Korbel household on Kingsheath Avenue, Dovecot, in a desperate bid to escape.

The bullet passed through Korbel’s wrist, before fatally hitting the nine-year-old.

Korbel said she thought about the milestones her daughter missed “every minute of every day.”

“You know starting secondary school, even the milestones of her brother passing his driving test,” she said.

“She’s missed out on that and she’s going to miss out on passing her own driving test as well.”

Korbel has joined other bereaved parents supporting an educational programme for schools to highlight the devastation caused by violence.

Julie Dale, the mother of 28-year-old Ashley Dale who was also shot in her own home just the day before Olivia, is also supporting the Dear Merseyside project.

She said that having the support of fellow parents who had also lost children to gun crime had really helped her, adding “we help each other loads”.

Joanne Rimmer – whose son Sam Rimmer was gunned down just over a week earlier, also launched the project, along with Tim Edwards, whose daughter Elle Edwards was shot dead outside a Wirral pub on Christmas Eve the same year.