‘Mother executed because of 12-year grudge against partner’

Nov 13 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

A MOTHER-of-three from Liverpool was “executed” because of a 12-year-old grudge against her partner, a court heard yesterday.

Lucy Hargreaves, 22, was shot three times then set on fire in an alleged revenge attack against her boyfriend, Gary Campbell.

Miss Hargreaves was asleep on the living room sofa at her home in Walton when three masked men armed with a sawn-off shotgun broke into the house in August 2005.

She was shot twice in the stomach and once in the head before the duvet cover she was sleeping under was covered in petrol and set alight. Petrol was also poured around the entrance and stairs of to block any escape for those upstairs.

Mr Campbell, who had been asleep up-stairs with the couple’s youngest daughter Faye, then aged nine months, was able to escape the fire after jumping with the child through a first floor window. After taking the baby to a neigh-bour’s property, he went back into the house and dragged Miss Hargreaves out but she had died of her bullet wounds.

Liverpool Crown Court was told that in 1993 Mr Campbell was a passenger in a stolen car which crashed and killed the four-year-old brother of one defendant, Tony Downes.

Downes, 20, and Kirk Bradley, 21, both of Huyton, deny murder.

Merseyside police have named Kevin Parle, 26, of no fixed address, as their third suspect. Parle has never been found.

Gordon Cole QC, prosecuting, said to the jury: “It may be that the intended victim was not Lucy. Whatever the answer is, we say that those three men forced their way into the house and shot Lucy Hargreaves in a way that amounts to an execution.”

The case continues.