A jury today saw CCTV footage showing the man accused of murdering Elle Edwards driving to a remote spot to burn out the car used by her killer.
Connor Chapman, 23, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court accused of being the man who sprayed 12 bullets from a Skorpion sub-machine gun at a group outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village, on Christmas Eve last year.
Two of those bullets hit 26-year-old "wholly innocent" Elle in the back of the head, while five men stood nearby were also wounded. The prosecution allege that two of those men - Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy - were the killer's intended targets.
READ MORE: Live court updates as Connor Chapman stands trial for Elle Edwards' murder
Today the jury saw a collection of CCTV clips showing the stolen black Mercedes A-Class used by the shooter on the night of the murder being driven towards a remote location on Grassy Lane, Frodsham, seven days later.
Nigel Power, KC, prosecuting, told the jury that Chapman accepts he had access to the car for around three months before the shooting, and that he also accepts driving it to Frodsham to destroy it. However the jury has also been told Chapman will claim someone else borrowed the vehicle on the night Elle was killed.
Today the jury saw CCTV showing Chapman arriving on foot at the Horse and Jockey pub in Upton at 7.26pm on New Year's Eve last year, where he collected a grey Mercedes GLC from a man who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The jury were talked through what happened next, as recorded by CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras along the roadways of Wirral and Cheshire. Chapman drove that vehicle to Private Drive in Barnston, the area where the gunman parked the stolen black Mercedes after the shooting.
The second man on trial, 20-year-old Thomas Waring, lives on Private Drive and is accused of travelling with Chapman from his home to Frodsham, which he denies.
Mr Power and witness Detective Constable Steven Duke talked the jury through footage showing the grey Mercedes GLC, which was fitted with false number plates during the journey, and the black Mercedes "travelling in convoy" towards Cheshire.
Mr Power said analysis of mobile phone cell site date showed that two handsets attributed to both Chapman and Waring appeared to travel with the vehicles, although Waring denies he was using that phone at the time.
CCTV from the Grassy Lane area showed a white flash in a distant corner, which DC Duke explained was the black Mercedes being torched.
The grey Mercedes GLC was then driven back to Chapman's home address in Houghton Road, Woodchurch, where it was picked up on the afternoon of January 1 by the same man who met Chapman at the Horse and Jockey pub.
The jury also heard that on December 30 a booking was made by a man called Lewis Hardman for a Brittany car ferry from Portsmouth to Santander in Spain with two passengers, Mr Hardman and Connor Chapman, leaving on Monday, January 2 this year.
The jury heard a temporary insurance policy was taken out on the vehicle on the booking, a white BMW, in the name of Connor Chapman. However on January 2, the booking was amended to remove Chapman as a named passenger.
The trial continues.
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