Footage shows Elle Edwards laughing and hugging friends in pub just hours before she's shot dead

Footage shows how Elle Edwards was laughing and hugging friends in a pub - just hours before she was shot dead on Christmas Eve.

It was a scene that would have been replicated in pubs across the country on December 24, a young woman of 26 out having a festive drink with her family and friends.

CCTV footage, captured in the Lighthouse pub on Christmas Eve last year, shows a bubbly Elle Edwards socialising and smiling. Hours later, she was fatally shot.

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Shortly before midnight, the popular beautician stepped outside for a cigarette. Just minutes later, Connor Chapman opened fire with a Skorpion submachine gun, reports the ECHO.

Elle was one of six pub-goers who were struck by 12 bullets he fired. Some of the others were seriously injured, but Elle was killed almost instantly.

Liverpool Crown Court previously heard that career criminal and self-confessed cocaine dealer Chapman lurked outside the busy pub for nearly three hours before carrying out the shooting. Elle was seen on CCTV inside the Lighthouse happily chatting with friends before going outside for a cigarette at 11.47pm.

Within five minutes, the gunman emerged and fired a volley of shots towards a group stood by the entrance to the Lighthouse with the military-grade weapon.

He then immediately went to the home of his 20-year-old 'criminal associate' Thomas Waring, who was said to have taken custody of the gun before helping to torch the car a week later on New Year's Eve.

The intended targets of the shooting were said to have been Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy, the former having been stood next to 'wholly innocent' Elle when 23-year-old Chapman unleashed the