Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s mother fights to ensure convicted criminals are made to appear in court to learn their fate after her nine-year-old daughter’s killer sulked in the cells while he was jailed for life
The mother of murdered school girl Olivia Pratt-Korbell has branded her killer Thomas Cashman ‘a coward’ after he refused to sit in the dock for his life sentence to be passed.
Cashman was planning on murdering rival criminal Joseph Nee, who escaped through the nine-year-old’s home. Cashman fired indiscriminately into the hallway, hitting the school girl and injuring her mother.
Speaking to Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond on the couch, Ms Korbel said she has been taking it ‘day by day’ since her daughter’s murder.
‘I try to keep busy and to try and have more good days than bad, she said.
She is now supporting the Face the Family campaign is trying to get a change in the law to oblige killers to attend their sentencing hearings, where they will see their victim’s family and listen to impact statements as well as the judge’s condemnation of their behaviour.
An online petition to change the law has so far received more than 19,000 signatures.
Cheryl Korbel, pictured, appeared on ITV’s This Morning where she branded her daughter’s killer Thomas Cashman ‘a coward’ for failing to turn up to his sentencing hearing
Olivia Pratt-Korbel, 9, was shot dead at her home in Liverpool on August 22, 2021 by Thomas Cashman
She told Dermot and Alison: ‘Writing the impact statement helped me.’ She said she had been keeping in a jar and putting it down on paper ‘helped get everything out… it’s a form of healing’.
She admitted writing the statement was a long process ‘over numerous days and several weeks’.
She said the first she and her family knew that Cashman was not going to appear for the sentencing was that morning.
‘We had gone through the whole trial listening to Cashman, we didn’t have a voice all the way through. The sentencing, the impact statements, that was our turn to have our voices but we never got it.’
She said she was not aware people were able to skip their sentencing hearing.
Thomas Cashman, pictured, refused to attend his sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court
Ms Korbel, pictured, was injured in the shooting which claimed the life of her daughter
‘Prison is a form of rehabilitation and that first step should be at the sentencing, listening to the families.’
Ms Korbel said everyone knows the reason he never attended the sentencing hearing: ‘He’s a coward.
Antonia Alverson, Ms Korbel’s cousin said Olivia’s murder has handed a life sentence to the family.
Earlier this week broadcasting watchdog Ofcom said it was investigating Greatest Hits Radio over the station’s support for the Face the Family petition.
Ofcom said it ‘does not seek to question the merits’ of the campaign. However, the watchdog’s rules prevent broadcasters from expressing views on ‘political and industrial controversy or current public policy’.
Farah Naz, the aunt of murdered law graduate Zara Aleena and Lisa Squire, whose 21-year-old daughter, Libby was raped and murdered in 2019, have among others pushing for the law change.
