The former Marine who ploughed into more than 100 fans at Liverpool’s Premier League title parade once bit a man’s ear off during a fight and was kicked out of the armed forces for fighting, a court has heard.
Paul Doyle, 54, has previous convictions dating back to when he was a teenager but has stayed out of trouble since his release from prison in 1995.
Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court Doyle had ‘taken steps to live a positive and production life’ in the past 30 years, going to university and raising a family.
But he said ‘those efforts to rehabilitate himself after a difficult early adulthood only serve to make more shocking and tragic what he did in Liverpool that day this May’.
Doyle has spent much of the two-day sentencing hearing crying in the dock as statements from dozens of fans were read out detailing how their lives were changed – in some cases irreparably – on May 26.
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Recounting Doyle’s criminal history, Mr Greaney told the court he had enlisted in the Royal Marines for 22 years’ service but was discharged after 22 months.
In October 1991, at the end of Paul Doyle’s 32-week training period for the Royal Marines at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, he had what he later described as a ‘scuffle’ with men in a nightclub.
Mr Greaney said after Doyle was thrown out, the men were waiting for him and he ‘got the better of them’.
He punched another person in the face several times and was convicted of a section 20 assault and fined by Exeter Magistrates’ Court.
In February 1992, he was convicted of two military offences – one of using violence to a superior officer and one of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline – and in July that year he was convicted of a military offence equivalent to criminal damage, the court heard.
Doyle was jailed for 12 months in November 1994 for causing grievous bodily harm after biting off the ear of another man in a fight in July the previous year, the court heard.
When he was interviewed by police earlier this year after the parade incident, he said he had become involved in a drunken fight with sailors.
The final previous offences he was convicted of before his guilty pleas last month were a minor offence of dishonesty and breach of the peace in Scotland in December 1993, the court heard.
Mr Greaney said between the ages of 18 and 22 Doyle was convicted of offences, including serious violence.
He said: ‘The prosecution recognises that in the 30 years between his release from prison in May 1995 and his dreadful actions on May 26, 2025, the defendant had taken steps to live a positive and productive life.
‘During that period, he was convicted of no offences. He went to university. He worked, including in positions of responsibility.
‘He had a family. Those efforts to rehabilitate himself after a difficult early adulthood only serve to make more shocking and tragic what he did in Liverpool that day this May.’
Doyle cried in the dock as Mr Greaney spoke.
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