‘Campaign of violence’ left innocent woman dead and twins jailed for life

James and Curtis Byrne “hunted down” and shot a rival gang member near a social club

On a Sunday night in the late spring of 2022, James and Curtis Byrne headed out into the evening on their e-bikes. Their destination, Beechwood Social Club, was little more than a five-minute ride away from their mum’s house on Wirral’s Noctorum estate.

The then 20-year-old twin brothers did not have a couple of pints, a game of darts or a few frames of pool in mind, however. They were there to carry out the assassination of a rival gang member.

Their mission came in the midst of a bloody feud that would only escalate further during six months of gun violence, drugs and burglaries. A spate of tit-for-tat shootings would leave Curtis Byrne himself lying seriously injured in a hospital bed and, ultimately, led to the tragic murder of a wholly innocent young woman outside a pub on Christmas Eve.

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That night at the social club belatedly saw the two siblings, now aged 23, locked up for life this week after both were convicted of attempted murder. A trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard that they had left their mother’s address on Cross Hey Avenue shortly after 10pm on May 11 2022 “looking for someone from the Ford estate”, also known as Beechwood.

They were said to have “found” Mitchell McGraa on Fender Way, where the then 17-year-old was seen on CCTV walking beside Beechwood Social Club before three men on electric bicycles approached from the same direction. The footage showed Curtis Byrne at the front of this group “circling around” before a second rider – who the prosecution alleged was Mason Smith, although he was ultimately cleared of any involvement in the incident – “tried to knock him off his feet”.

Alex Langhorn, prosecuting, described how the teenager “ran for his life” as James Byrne “fired again and again and again” with a gun. McGraa was struck once to the back of the thigh, with a bullet becoming lodged within his leg, but was “able to make good his escape” via the rear of a parade of nearby shops.

Jurors heard the shooting came against a background of two opposing gangs who were “involved in the supply of controlled drugs”, one located on the Woodchurch estate and one based in Beechwood. The court was told that “tensions had been rising since at least 2021” between the two factions and only “began to get worse” from thereon in.

One incident on September 7 2021 supposedly saw Smith, now 20, chased down the street on his bike by a red Ford Focus before he was struck and left with numerous broken bones. The car was subsequently found burnt out on the eastern fringes of the Ford estate.

Then, on March 22 2022, a man called Callum Taylor was shot in the stomach as he allegedly dealt drugs on Hoole Road in Woodchurch. CCTV footage showed him being approached by a grey Ford car before he ran off as a series of five bangs were heard, followed by screams.

This vehicle was also later torched on the outskirts of Beechwood. Taylor was described as being a “close friend” of James Byrne, with the two having lived together in New Ferry at one stage.

The Woodchurch-affiliated Byrnes were said to targeted McGraa, part of the Ford OCG, while he was out dealing drugs. This, the crown alleged, formed the motivation for the shooting, with the victim having stashed a bag containing a number of wraps of cocaine in nearby bushes ahead of the attempted hit.

CCTV showed the brothers leaving the address on Cross Hey Avenue before being captured on nearby Avelon Close, where James Byrne – who was labelled as “the man in charge” – was shown “pointing where to go” and “pointing the way forward”. Six bullet casings were recovered from outside the social club following the shooting.

McGraa was subsequently taken to Arrowe Park Hospital with a 1cm entry wound to the back of his thigh. He later underwent surgery in order to remove a bullet which had become lodged within his leg.

In the aftermath of the incident, the Byrnes were caught on camera running back to the property on Cross Hey Avenue, having “stashed their bikes elsewhere”. They were never recovered by Merseyside Police.

At around 11pm the same evening, Smith and James Byrne allegedly left for their respective homes on Newark Close in Woodchurch and Thorburn Road in New Ferry in a taxi. All three defendants then “dropped” their phone numbers the following day.

Smith was subsequently arrested on May 14, and gave a prepared statement under interview claiming he had “no knowledge or involvement” in the attack and had not been on the Beechwood estate “for at least a year”. Curtis Byrne was detained when PCs attended Cross Hey Avenue on May 19, being seen in a pair of shorts jumping out of a bedroom window.

He then “tried to run” but was caught after falling, later giving no comment when interviewed. James Byrne was quizzed by detectives on July 27 last year but “exercised his right to silence throughout”.

It would take more than two years for the Byrnes to have their day in court over the shooting but, in the interim, the Woodchurch OCG unravelled during a month of bloodshed in December 2022. It ended in a tragedy which shocked Merseyside, and indeed the nation, when 26-year-old Elle Edwards was gunned down outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey.

First came the moment when Curtis Byrne was shot in the legs on Orrets Meadow Road in Woodchurch shortly after 8pm on December 3. The ECHO reported at the time that residents took refuge upstairs in their homes after hearing “two shots separated by a scream”, while a man who was hit by these bullets was seen being “dragged” through gardens by another male in search of safety.

Witnesses stated that his assailant fled the scene on a moped before police arrived at the scene. One meanwhile added that the incident was “over in seconds”.

But the incident ironically saw Byrne’s secret life of crime exposed when the police visited him in his hospital bed. Messages, videos, screenshots and notes which were found on his phone at this time would link him to a whole host of offences.

The officers had attended his bedside at Aintree Hospital two days after the shooting in order to obtain a statement from him in relation to the incident, and prosecutor Andrew Jebb later told the same court in February 2023 said that Byrne, of Park Road South in Birkenhead, was “unable to provide any reason why anyone would want to shoot him” when asked by his visitors from the force. The PCs then asked to look at his phone “to see if anything on it could assist their investigation”, but he aroused suspicions when he suddenly began deleting materials from the device.

When seized and analysed, it revealed that Byrne – who walked with the use of a crutch during this hearing – had been involved in the supply of cocaine and cannabis and a string of burglaries in which high value cars and motorbikes were stolen. Detectives found a “large number of fairly short video clips” showing large bags of cannabis and blocks of cannabis resin and “conversations” with customers over the course of several months.

Messages showed contacts “regularly asking” to purchase drugs from him, with Byrne “seeming to have no difficulty in fulfilling these requests”. Several “tick lists” were also discovered in his notes app, showing monies owed to him totalling several thousands of pounds.

The phone also uncovered his involvement in five separate burglaries targeting properties in Nocturum and Irby between July and November 2022. The first break-in came on July 9, when Byrne was one of two men who burgled a house on Beryl Road at around 3.30am while the occupants were asleep upstairs.

The intruders then drove off in a BMW 2 Series which had been parked outside. A video of the stolen car, taken 30 minutes after the theft, was located on the phone in spite of his attempts to delete the file.

Then, at roughly 1.30am on July 14, a householder at an address on Westway was alerted by a noise outside but assumed “it was foxes”. However, he later discovered that burglars had forced entry to his garage after damaging electric security gates before stealing a Kawasaki motorbike.

A third burglary came at 2.30am on July 27, when two males climbed over a fence and gained entry to a garage on Wendover Close before taking a Triumph motorcycle. Byrne’s phone was found to contain a screenshot of a social media appeal posted by the owner’s wife following the theft alongside a video of the keys being turned in the ignition of the motorbike.

At around 2.30am on August 1, an electric bike was taken from a shed where it had been on charge at a home on Glenwood Drive. CCTV showed two men getting out of a taxi before one was seen leaving the area on the vehicle.

In relation to this break-in, Byrne’s phone contained Google Street View screenshots from the area in question. Shortly after 4am the same day, he had used the internet to browse adverts selling the same type of e-bike and then exchanged messages on TikTok attempting to sell it for £700 – although he admitted that he did not have the charger or keys.

The final burglary came in the early hours of November 28 when three men – said to have been James Byrne, Smith and Connor Chapman – wearing balaclavas and gloves broke into a “secure” shed on Thirlmere Avenue. It took them around 10 minutes to remove various locks from the door, after which the offenders took two electric Sur-Ron bikes and fled through a removed fence panel.

Again, Google Street View screenshots of the vicinity were found on Byrne’s mobile alongside a clip of him using the stolen wheels outside his own home at 2am that day. He had also called a taxi from his phone shortly after midnight, with this car later seen on roads nearby to the targeted property.

The total value of the vehicles taken, some of which were never returned, was an estimated £36,000. Byrne was arrested on December 22 after the device had been analysed, with a quantity of cannabis, suspected counterfeit currency, a black balaclava and the battery from an electric bike seized from him at this time.

Byrne admitted conspiracy to commit burglary and theft and being concerned in the supply of cocaine and cannabis following the discoveries on his phone. He was jailed for seven years.

His shooting was later cited as one of a series of violent attacks involving the Woodchurch and Ford OCGs which “culminated” in Ms Edwards’ death. Nigel Power KC, appearing for the prosecution as Chapman stood trial accused of her killing, detailed how the Glock pistol used in the attack on Byrne was then fired at a man called Kieran Cowley – also identified as a member of the Woodchurch set – on Newark Close in Noctorum on December 18.

One of the supposed targets of the Lighthouse pub shooting, Jake Duffy, was linked to a stolen Ford Kuga car which had been present at the scene of the assault upon Cowley and was later torched. On December 23, Duffy and his associate Kieran Salkeld then subjected a rival, Sam Searson, to a brutal assault on Highfield Road in Rock Ferry by repeatedly punching, kicking and stamping on him.

Then, shortly before midnight on December 24, popular beautician Ms Edwards was stood outside the pub in Wallasey Village smoking a cigarette when she was shot twice in the head by Chapman, who had been loitering in the vicinity for nearly three hours. Five men, including Duffy and Salkeld, were also injured after being hit by some of the 12 bullets which were fired from a Skorpion submachine gun.

Mr Power told the court in June 2023: “What otherwise might have been viewed as a random or inexplicable shooting of a wholly innocent woman, Elle Edwards, was in fact the culmination of an ongoing feud between people from the Woodchurch Estate and people from the Ford Estate – which included Jake Duffy and Kieran Salkeld, who were the intended victims of the shooting.”

Chapman was later asked on the stand whether he “wanted revenge for Curtis Byrne being shot”, and replied “no, not at all”. But his account was roundly rejected by members of the jury and he was unanimously found guilty of Ms Edwards’ murder, as well as associated offences including the attempted murders of Duffy and Salkeld, and handed a life imprisonment with a minimum term of 42 years.

December 2022 would also see James Byrne arrested when police raided his flat on Thorburn Road in connection with his involvement in the supply of class A and B drugs, which dated back as far as nearly two years previously. He was one of three men found inside a property on Zig Zag Road in Wallasey when a search warrant was executed by officers shortly after 9am on March 2 2021, with items including £888 of cocaine and around £600 of cannabis being seized from the address.

When Byrne was arrested, he responded by saying: “It’s all mine. Everything illegal in here is mine.”

He was also linked to the “JJ Line”, a county lines operation which supplied drugs in the Birkenhead area between June and December 2022, after its graft phone was evidenced to have co-located with his own personal mobile. Byrne was also stopped in a vehicle in possession of two phones on November 16 that year, but the police were “unaware” of this drugs line at this stage and he was “allowed to go on his way” with both devices.

Two days afterwards, the JJ Line graft phone sent out a message to users stating: “JJ had a few problems in the past few days. Back on at 8am tomorrow morning on a new number. Sorry about the past few days. Back about tomorrow with the best in town.”

Byrne was eventually handed six years behind bars in February this year for being concerned in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine and possession of cocaine and cannabis with intent to supply. He responded by telling the judge: “Lad, you’re a nonce and your breath stinks of s***.”

This would be echoed in a similarly furious rant when he and his brother were convicted of attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life by a jury in July this year in relation to McGraa’s shooting, calling one police officer in the courtroom a “little nonce” and another a “fat b***end” as well as threatening “I’m coming for you lad”. The Byrnes returned to the same court for sentencing on Friday afternoon, with both handed life sentences with a minimum term of 18 years and eight months.

Sentencing, Judge Garrett Byrne told them: “These offences were committed against a background of a long standing feud between two gangs in the Wirral. Those gangs were highly territorial, with one based in Woodchurch and one based on the Ford estate.

“I am satisfied and sure that this dispute was rooted in gang rivalry over the trade in illegal drugs in this part of the Wirral and beyond. The offences were the latest in a series of retaliatory, tit for tat incidents of violence. Both gangs were willing to engage in reckless street violence, with no regard for the safety of others.

“Whether he was the intended target or whether the defendants intended to kill any member of the rival gang they happened to come upon is not entirely clear. On any view, Mr McGraa found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Even though it was James Byrne who discharged the firearm, both defendants were active participants in this attack. It was plain that you were both acting with murderous intent.

“The background of gang warfare is a highly aggravating feature in this case. This was a revenge attack, part of a campaign of violence.

“Although the defendants do have a record of criminal convictions, those do not include any offences involving the use of force or violence. On the other hand, there is no particularly compelling mitigation.

“I have regard to the defendants’ challenging backgrounds. I also have regard to the relatively young age of the defendants. However, any reduction in sentence must be modest due to the defendants’ commitment to a criminal lifestyle.

“This is a very serious offence, involving an attempt to shoot and kill another young man, and there are good grounds for believing that you will both be a serious danger to the public that cannot be reliably be assessed at this time. This is one of those exceptional cases where a life sentence should be passed.”