Mother and daughter jailed for assisting murderer

A mother and daughter who assisted a killer by harbouring him in their home for five weeks have been jailed.

Ricardo Cotteral, 33, was fatally stabbed after being ambushed by a group, including Malcolm Francis, in Broad Street, Nottingham, in April 2022.

Elisha Faulkner and her mother Julie Faulkner, who both admitted assisting an offender by hiding Francis after the murder, were jailed on Monday.

At Nottingham Crown Court, Elisha, 30, of Chudleigh Road, Stockland Green, Birmingham, was jailed for three years, while her 64-year-old mother, of the same address, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years.

The pair were sentenced alongside Kimberley Tomlinson, who was found guilty of assisting an offender following a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

The 31-year-old, of Olton Avenue, Nottingham, was jailed for two years, suspended for two years.

Cotteral was targeted as an "act of revenge" following a previous violent incident that caused "hostility and ill-feeling" between him and his killers.

Police said that in the aftermath of the fatal attack, the defendants provided assistance to Cotteral's killers, despite knowing or believing they were involved in the murder.

Francis, who dealt the fatal blow, stayed with Kimberley Tomlinson, who was pregnant with his child, overnight and left his vehicle at her address, where she concealed it with a car cover.

Officers said he was later picked up from a London property by Elisha Faulkner, who took him to her mother's address.

Up until his arrest, the pair provided him with food and accommodation, detectives said.

In September 2023, Francis, 30, of no fixed address, was jailed for life, to serve a minimum term of 30 years in jail, after he was one of four men convicted of Cotteral's murder.

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