Footage shows Ashley Dale's 'war zone' home minutes after she was murdered

This is the moment police officers arrived at the home of Ashley Dale after she was murdered and declared it "like a war zone". The footage shows Merseyside Police officers, PC Darren Bratt and PC Daniel Rowlands, arrive at Ashley's home on Leinster Road in Old Swan, minutes after she had been shot.

Some of the footage, previously released by the ECHO during the trial of her killers, forms part of the opening of a new Channel 4 documentary tonight. Merseyside Detectives follows the force as officers tried to solve the murder case of Ashley, but also that of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine, who was murdered the following day in a separate bungled gangland assassination.

The documentary opens with the 999 call to Merseyside Police from a concerned neighbour of Ashley's. He tells the call handler: "I've just recently heard a loud noise in the back. I've stood on my back wall - there's a lady lying there groaning." The documentary then shows the two officers arrive on her street and begin to move through the house.

The footage then shows the officers calling for support after finding Ashley. One officer says: "I need an ambulance. I've got a female. She's unconscious and covered in blood." Viewers can then hear his colleague say: "Is that a gunshot wound. There's a bullet casing there."

As the officer moves through the house he reports "spent casings and impact marks in the dining room". He adds he can smell cordite, a firearm propellant, in the air before remarking: "It's like a war zone."

Ashley, a 28-year-old environmental officer at Knowsley Council, was murdered by four men in a gangland hit. James Witham, Joseph Peers, Niall Barry and Sean Zeisz were unanimously found guilty of the murder at a high profile trial at Liverpool Crown Court in November last year and jailed for a combined total of 173 years.

The court heard the murder came against the backdrop of an ongoing feud between the four men and Ashley's boyfriend Lee Harrison - a man who ran with a Huyton-based organised crime group known as the Hillsiders. Speaking to the ECHO last week ahead of the documentary, lead investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Cath Cummings said she wished Ashley had walked away from her partner and his lifestyle due to the ongoing threats.

Schoolgirl Olivia was murdered less than 48 hours after Ashley, when gunman Thomas Cashman chased convicted drug dealer Joseph Nee down Kingsheath Avenue in Dovecot. Nee, trying to escape Cashman, attempted to flee inside Olivia's home, with a stray bullet passing through the wrist of the nine-year-old's mum Cheryl Korbel before hitting her. Cashman was sentenced to 42 years in prison after a trial at Manchester Crown Court.

Merseyside Detectives, a fly-on-the-wall documentary from Liverpool-based company LA Productions, follows the investigations of DCI Cummings and recently retired Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Baker, the senior investigating officer into Olivia's murder. The documentary, that will provide exclusive access into Merseyside Police's investigations, will also include interviews with the officers involved in the cases and the victims' families, including Ashley's mum Julie and Olivia's mum Cheryl.

Speaking to Broadcast when the project was announced, Channel 4's Sacha Mirzoeff said: "This is the highly sensitive inside story of how the police investigating teams go about their work while the families tell their side of the story from within the Merseyside community."

Appearing on BBC Breakfast on Thursday last week, Julie said: "It was a very, very, very hard watch but I'm glad it's been done. I'm glad we were able to have a part of it and give Ashley a voice, and also to tell our story and come into our home and see us as a family and how this has affected us, what this does to you, how it affects every aspect of your life."

Merseyside Detectives: The Murders of Ashley and Olivia begins on Monday, August 19, at 9pm on Channel 4 and All 4. Episodes will be broadcast nightly at 9pm on Channel 4 until Thursday, August 22. The whole four-part series will be available to watch on All 4 after the first episode is broadcast.