LONDON (AP) — A driver who injured more than 130 people when he plowed his car into a crowd of soccer fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League championship was sentenced Tuesday to over 21 years in prison.
Paul Doyle rammed his minivan through a sea of fans on May 26 in two minutes of horror that ended only when a bystander got in the vehicle and forced it into park. It came to a rest atop people.
“You struck people head-on, knocked others onto the bonnet, drove over limbs, crushed prams and forced those nearby to scatter in terror,” Judge Andrew Menary told Doyle in Liverpool Crown Court. “You plowed on at speed and over a considerable distance, violently knocking people aside or simply driving over them, person after person after person.”
Prosecutors said Doyle flew into a fury because he couldn’t get where he was going fast enough to pick up friends who had attended the parade.
Doyle sobbed during much of the two-day sentencing as prosecutors detailed the crime, using graphic video footage and reading emotional statements from dozens of victims.
Doyle, 54, pleaded guilty last month to 31 counts, including dangerous driving and multiple counts of attempting or causing grievous bodily harm and intentional wounding.
Footage from his dashboard showed terrified people trying to scramble to safety before being knocked aside, tossed in the air or slipping under his bumper.
Many said they feared a terror attack was unfolding.
But the explanation was “as simple as the consequences were awful,” prosecutor Paul Greaney said. “He was a man in a rage, whose anger had completely taken hold of him.”
Doyle’s dashboard footage captured him cursing at people in the street, blaring his horn and using the F-word while screaming “move, move, move.”
When Doyle was placed in a police van, he said: “I’ve just ruined my family’s life,” Greaney said.
The impact was far broader.
A prosecutor spent hours reading statements of victims, some still nursing physical injuries and others haunted by memories.
“The distress of seeing the crowd scatter in panic and bodies being thrown into the air is something that will stay with me forever,” said Sgt. Dan Hamilton of Merseyside Police, who was injured. “The noise was sickening, dull thuds that are difficult to describe and impossible to forget. I remember lying on the (ground) thinking ‘This is it; I’m going to die.’”
A 16-year-old boy kept awake by nightmares lost his apprenticeship as a woodworker because he couldn’t concentrate. A 23-year-old man had to learn how to walk again. A woman not from the area said the Liverpool accent now triggers anxiety. A woman whose daughter was a die-hard Liverpool fan could no longer watch its matches.
“The sight of red shirts and the sounds of chants are unbearable reminders of that day,” Susan Farrell said.
Doyle told police he had panicked as the crowd pounded on his car, shattering a window and trying to pull him from the vehicle. But the judge dismissed that as “demonstrably untrue” because they were reacting to his attack.
Defense lawyer Simon Csoka said Doyle was horrified by what he did and was ashamed and remorseful and did not expect sympathy.
Csoka acknowledged Doyle’s troubled 20s when he was discharged from the Marines and had criminal convictions that included biting a sailor’s ear off in a drunken fight. But Doyle turned his life around, went to university, had a successful IT career and raised three children with his wife.
Doyle did not intend to harm anyone that day, Csoka said. But when he decided to avoid a line of gridlocked cars and turned into the crowd, “serious injury was inevitable.”
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This version corrects to say he was sentenced to over 21 years.
