A 36-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, Merseyside Police said.
It comes after Olivia’s family released an appeal pleading for witnesses to come forward with information about the nine-year-old’s death.
“If anyone knows anything, now is the time to speak up,” they said. “It is not about being a ‘snitch’ or a ‘grass’ it is about finding out who took our baby away from us. Please do the right thing,” OIivia’s family said in a statement this week.
Merseyside Police said the man, from the Huyton area, was arrested on Thursday night on two counts of attempted murder and suspicion of murder.
The man is currently in custody where he is being questioned by detectives.
Convicted burglar and drug dealer Joseph Nee also from the Dovecot area of Liverpool, has been named as the intended target of the shooting.
The 35-year-old is understood to have burst into the youngster’s family home after her mum Cheryl Korbel opened the front door after hearing a disturbance.
The killer chased him inside firing indiscriminately, wounding Cheryl and Nee, and killing Olivia. Her older brother and sister were in the house but upstairs at the time.
A man who was with Nee but escaped unharmed has now been identified, while the driver of an Audi Q3 which collected him from Olivia’s house and took him to hospital has also been questioned by police.
In other developments, Detective Kameen praised the level of support from communities as “phenomenal”, but continued to appeal for anyone with information to come forward.
“I am incredibly grateful for the sheer levels and volume of information that we have received so far,” he said. “This level of engagement, this level of cooperation, and this level of working together simply must continue.”
And he added: “Again, I would ask those who operate in the criminal fraternity to search their consciences around these three attacks and come forward.”
Olivia’s killing occurred following a spate of violence in the city which has seen three people killed in a week.
Council worker, Ashley Dale, 28, was shot at an address in the Old Swan area in the early hours of Sunday morning in a suspected case of mistaken identity. A man has now been arrested on suspicion of murder in that case, while a woman has been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.
More follows…
