Dad of slain beautician Elle Edwards takes on gun gangs and says she'd think he was 'bonkers'

When Tim Edwards’ daughter Elle was killed in the crossfire of a senseless gang war, understandably he wanted retribution.

The 26-year-old beautician was an innocent bystander caught up in a dispute that had nothing to do with her. Her loving dad Tim was so angry, he wanted to burn to the ground the pub where she was shot dead. But as he closely followed the police investigation, he kept thinking back to something a customer once said to him.

Fifteen years before Elle was killed, Tim was working as a plasterer’s labourer in an armed police officer’s house in Liverpool. Eleven-year-old Rhys Jones had recently been shot dead crossing a pub car park in the same city on his way home from football practice.

Tim recalls: “We were talking about gun crime in Liverpool and how little had changed since the murder. And [the client] said to me, ‘Mark my words, there will be another Rhys Jones’. Elle was only about 12 at the time. I never imagined that man might have been talking about her.”

After Elle’s murder on Christmas Eve 2022, the dad of four remembered that officer’s prediction. Pushing aside his desire for revenge, Tim decided he must do something to stop the cycle of violence. And now, with shootings in Liverpool on the rise again, he is preparing to go into some of the city’s toughest communities and tell teenagers tempted by drugs gangs that there is a better way to live.

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Tim says: “It’s still too easy to get access to a firearm. Young people are still being enticed into drug gangs. I lost Elle but nothing has changed, just like with Rhys. I feel it’s inevitable that more families will go though what we have. These kids need to know that this is not a game, it’s not Grand Theft Auto. If you run around with a gun in your pocket, the chances are that you are going to use it, and someone’s going to get killed.”

Elle died instantly when she was shot twice in the back of the head by a masked gunman who opened fire on the car park of the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village, Wirral.

Connor Chapman, 23, was jailed for a minimum of 48 years for her murder. His accomplice Thomas Waring, 20, got nine years for possessing a weapon and assisting an offender.

Tim’s family was shattered forever. He says: “Elle was just a normal girl, just out enjoying herself, having a drink on Christmas Eve. It could have been absolutely anybody. I want to stop other families having to go through this. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

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The dad, who is appearing in the TV series Crimes That Shook Britain, has spent six months setting up a charity, The Elle Edwards Foundation, and seeking funding. This week Greene King, the chain that owns the pub where Elle was murdered, donated the first £10,000.

In the past, Tim had railed against the firm and wanted to sue because he said there were no security guards that night. But then he decided to suggest Greene King work with the charity instead. He says: “They donated ten grand, but it’s just the start, I’m not going away and they know that. All the things we want to deliver, like education programmes, going into communities to educate people and changing people’s attitudes, it all takes money.”

As well as changing those attitudes and supporting other families affected by gang violence and gun crime, the foundation will provide scholarships to help women achieve their dreams. Tim says: “Elle was very funny, and very caring, and she’d light up the room. She had a very laid-back attitude to get through life, but at the same time was very ambitious and worked hard. She set her goals, and before she was killed that was to have her own beauty business, which she was on her way to achieving while also still working as a dental nurse to pay the bills.”

To raise money Tim walked 800 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and in April ran the gruelling seven-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert in 40C heat.

Tim says the need for his charitable foundation is pressing, as violence between opposing gangs in Merseyside’s Woodchurch and Beechwood estates – the same gang war that took Elle’s life – continues. Last month brothers James and Curtis Byrne were jailed after firing seven bullets at a 17-year-old, who was hit in the leg. It followed the deaths of innocent Ashley Dale, 28, shot in her home in Old Swan in August 2022, and Olivia Pratt-Korbell, nine, who was killed at home by Thomas Cashman as he chased fellow drug dealer Joseph Nee in the Dovecot area the very next day.

Tim says: “We need to start working now. I’ve got the support of the police, and organisations that take in kids involved in drug dealing and county lines gangs. I want to go straight into these communities and deal with the young adults, the men but also the females – there’s an increasing problem with girls being exploited to carry drugs, because they are less likely to get stopped.”

Tim’s goal is to be making a difference by Christmas – a day that will always be painful for him and Elle’s mum Gaynor, sister Lucy and brothers Connor and George. He says: “It would be nice to be able to say on Christmas Day that we have something to show for it. Other than that, we don’t celebrate it. It will obviously never be the same again.”

The family remember Elle every day. “We’ve got a bench on the riverfront that I go to walk past or sit on every day,” Tim says. “There’s a mural of her too in the city. We make a point of talking about her. We laugh and joke about some of the silly things that we got up to. And now there’s the foundation too, through which we can change people’s lives in her name.”

He believes Elle would think he was “absolutely bonkers” for trying to make the streets safer for young people – but would also be proud of him. He adds: “Before all this happened, I was just one of the lads. All I want to do now is make this a success, for it to do what she would have done, which is to help people and get the best out of people.”

• Crimes That Shook Britain is on Crime+Investigation, Monday, 9pm. See elleedwardsfoundation.co.uk

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