Thomas Cashman, the assassin who killed Olivia Pratt-Korbel, failed in his attempt to have his life sentence reduced.
When Cashman, 34, was found guilty of killing nine-year-old Olivia at her house in Dovecot, Liverpool, he filed an appeal against the minimum 42-year sentence that was imposed on him. This was done at the beginning of July.
A judge’s denial of the application has now been confirmed by the Court of Appeal.
The rejection of Cashman’s request to have his prison sentence reduced, according to Olivia Korbel’s mother Cheryl Korbel, “meant everything to us as a family, it was huge.”
Cashman ‘ruthlessly pursued’ his intended target, drug dealer Joseph Nee, into the Korbel family home in Knotty Ash, Liverpool on the evening of August 22 last year.
Seconds earlier, Olivia had gotten out of bed and run to her mother screaming ‘I’m scared mummy, I’m scared’ after hearing a commotion outside.
She was standing on the stairs when Cashman fired at Nee as he tried to barge his way in, with the bullet going through the front door, through Ms Korbel’s right hand and into her chest.
Jurors heard Cashman fled on foot, jumping over garden fences, and Nee staggered out into the road where he was picked up by five men in a black car as Olivia lay fatally wounded.
She was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and rushed straight to the resuscitation room but was declared dead at 11.15pm.
Cashman, who jurors heard had planned Nee’s ‘execution’, was convicted of Olivia’s murder after just over nine hours’ deliberations following a three-week trial.
He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Nee, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Ms Korbel, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
After Olivia’s family endured a four-week trial, her killer refused to show up for his sentencing, instead remaining in his cell.
Cheryl, 48, told The Mirror: ‘We knew when he didn’t show up in court that he was going to appeal it.’
Cheryl said: ‘I laughed when I heard he had appealed his sentence, I just thought it was a joke, we went right through court and then he never turned up for his sentence.’
‘You never get closure’, Cheryl told the newspaper, ‘and then for him to not turn up was a punch in the stomach. It’s not a quick process at all. It was draining.’
‘The pain he has put us through, we’ve lost Olivia, she was the core of the family, she was the youngest. But whether that makes any difference to him I’m not sure.
‘The law needs changing so other families don’t have to go through the same thing, so they get the chance to tell these offenders the pain they have caused.’