Four men are accused of working as a team to plan and carry out the shooting of 19-year-old Nyle Corrigan
A teenager who was fatally shot held his sister’s hand and said “I’ll be sweet kid” moments before he died. Nyle Corrigan, 19, was shot in the back when two gunmen waited for him by the side of Boode Croft in Stockbridge Village at around 6.30pm on November 12 2020.
Six people have gone on trial at Liverpool Crown Court charged in connection with the murder of Mr Corrigan. Four men – Jamie Coggins, 28, Martin Wilson, 37, Connor Smith, 26, and Anthony Llewellyn, 25 – are all accused of murder and conspiracy to possess a 9mm Glock self-loading pistol with intent to endanger life. Melanie Smith, 47, and Mark Sharpe, 49 – the parents of Connor Smith – are accused of assisting an offender, the particulars being they allegedly helped their son travel from Liverpool to Portsmouth on November 26 2020, two weeks after the shooting.
Richard Wright KC told the jury that the prosecution’s case was that Wilson and Connor Smith were the gunmen who carried out the shooting but were supported by Coggins and Llewelyn “who were both fully signed up to the plan”. The prosecutor said: “Together, we say, those four men are all responsible for his murder.”
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Mr Corrigan’s younger sister Amelia Corrigan gave evidence during the trial today, Thursday, November 7. The jury of six men and six women were first played a video-recorded interview with Ms Corrigan, who was 17 at the time of her brother’s death, which was dated November 21 2020.
During questioning from a police detective, Ms Corrigan said she had a phone call from a family friend at around 6.30pm. Ms Corrigan said: “She said ‘are you with your mum, Nyle has been shot’.” She told the detective she then ran around to the house of her granddad, Leslie, who lived at the address with Mr Corrigan’s brother Rory.
The court heard she told her brother to ring Mr Corrigan’s phone, before the three of them got into a car along with the siblings’ mum, Lesley Kelly, who drove to Boode Croft. Ms Corrigan said her brother “was on the floor but jumped up and was speaking with us”.
However, she said he was then struggling to get his breath and “while I was holding his hand, froth started coming out his mouth and he went blue”. Ms Corrigan said her brother told her “I’ll be sweet kid” and added he would be with his nan.
Ms Corrigan said the paramedics arrived soon after who tried to work on her brother but he died soon after. She told the interviewing detective: “He knew he was going to go but waited for us to get there.”
The trial previously heard a statement from Stuart Rock, a local man who said he was at home when he “heard male voices shouting to get an ambulance”. In a statement read to the court by junior prosecution counsel Alex Langhorn, Mr Rock said he ran to the scene where he “saw the man who I know to be a local man called Nyle”.
He said: “I tried to reassure him…and stop the bleeding.” Mr Rock said he later realised a crowd had gathered around. The court heard the North West Ambulance Service’s (NWAS) control centre received a call at around 6.31pm and were told someone had been shot.
The court heard when paramedics arrived “Nyle was lying on the ground with his mum Lesley telling him he was going to be alright”. The paramedics were said to have found him “pale, with shallow breath, not speaking and unresponsive”.
The court heard he was in traumatic cardiac arrest. Dr Tim Smith from the NWAS arrived on the scene at 7pm but Mr Corrigan was pronounced dead at the scene at 7.20pm. Dr Drian Rodgers, a Home Office pathologist, told the court yesterday that the cause of death was shock and haemorrhage as a result of the gunshot wound.
Mr Wright told the jury during the prosecution’s opening that “the origins of the dispute lie with a man called Liam Cohen”. Mr Wright said Mr Cohen also lived on Little Moss Hey with his partner Kayleigh Donnelly and had previously been on good terms with Mr Corrigan but the relationship “had soured” because of an unpaid debt.
The court heard that messages suggested Mr Cohen owed Mr Corrigan £60, while Wilson, a distant relative of the former, also owed £20. The jury heard messages that showed firstly Ms Kelly, using her daughter’s Facebook account, and later Mr Corrigan himself attempted to retrieve the unpaid money.
Mr Wright said this culminated on November 9 when Mr Corrigan sent Ms Donnelly a message that said: “It’s you with the attitude you cheeky c***. I’m texting you because all he does is blank, tell him I want the dough tomorrow.”
Mr Wright told the jury that Mr Cohen sent a message to Wilson and said: “Ring me lad, need you to come down Lesley with me, the cheeky c*** calling Kay and that.” Mr Wright said the “minor debt” had escalated and an “irritated” Mr Cohen had “brought in” Wilson.
The prosecutor told the jury on November 11 “a team of men gathered around Martin Wilson and travelled to Little Moss Hey”. The court heard that shortly after 9pm Ms Kelly and her daughter Ms Corrigan were at home when an Audi 4×4 pulled up at their house and a number of men, “wearing balaclavas and face coverings”, demanded to know where Mr Corrigan was.
Mr Wright told the court that 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”.
Mr Wright previously told the jury that the two alleged gunmen had met up at around 5.15pm before buying black hats, face masks and gloves from a convenience store close to Wilson’s home address on Highfield Road.
They are then alleged to have made their way on foot in the direction of Quickthorn Crescent. A vehicle was then captured on CCTV pulling into the same road. The prosecution said an expert in vehicle comparison had concluded the car seen is likely a BMW 3 series of the same type as owned by co-defendant Coggins.
Mr Wright told the jury: “This was, we suggest the pre-shooting rendezvous when the missing components of the plan could be brought together including: gun, ammunition, location of the victim and the rough plan for the post shooting clean up.”
The two men are then alleged to have made their way onto the scene where they then waited “knowing that Nyle Corrigan was going to be present”. The jury was told upon seeing Mr Corrigan on his electric bike the two men alerted each other before hurrying towards him. The court heard the killers exchanged words with their target before and after the shot, that went through his spine and shredded an artery, before they left him to die.
The killers then stole Mr Corrigan’s Sur-ron electric bike to make their escape. The bike was later found abandoned in undergrowth in the area of Quickthorn Crescent, while the firearm, which had a defect which meant a second cartridge would not load into the magazine, was later recovered in an unconnected police operation.
Coggins, of The Spinney, Stockbridge Village; Llewellyn, formally of Olivette Way, St Helens; Smith of Midway Road in Huyton; Wilson, of no fixed address, and Melanie Smith and Mark Sharpe, both also of Midway Road, deny the charges before them. The trial before Mr Justice Goose continues.
