A MAN has admitted killing a council worker after she was shot dead outside her home.

James Witham, 41, has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Ashley Dale, 28, after she was found with a fatal gunshot wound.

Ashley was tragically found unresponsive in the back garden of her home, in Liverpool, on August 21 last year.

Witham, of Huyton, Merseyside, denied murder.

Appearing at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday, he pleaded guilty to a lesser count of manslaughter.

He was charged alongside five other men.

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Sean Zeisz, 27; Niall Barry, 26; Joseph Peers, 29; and Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, are also charged with murder and are due to stand trial next month alongside Witham and Kallum Radford, who denies assisting an offender.

He is due to stand trial on October 2.

Miss Dale was one of three people shot dead within a week in Liverpool last year - with nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel killed in her Dovecot home on August 22 and Sam Rimmer, 22, killed in Dingle on August 16.

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