A former Royal Marine has pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial to ploughing his car into a crowd at a Liverpool FC victory parade, injuring 134 people including two babies.
Paul Doyle, 54, deliberately drove his Ford Galaxy at football fans after tailgating an ambulance down a packed road that was closed to non-emergency vehicles on 26 May.
Footage showed people being thrown into the air as Doyle’s car accelerated rapidly and erratically into the crowd. Onlookers had tried to remove him from the vehicle moments before the collisions.
More than 50 people needed hospital treatment, including a number of children, as his car struck more than 100 fans in just seven minutes.
The youngest victims were two babies aged six months and seven months at the time. The oldest victim, a 77-year-old woman, suffered multiple fractures after being trapped under Doyle’s vehicle with an 11-year-old boy and two others.
Doyle originally denied 31 offences against 21 adults and eight children. These included 17 counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm and nine of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
But on Wednesday, on what was due to be the first day of a four-week trial, the father of three sobbed in the dock before changing his pleas to guilty.
The judge, Andrew Menary KC, told Doyle he could sit down as the defendant struggled to compose himself. Doyle then sat with his head in his hands after entering all 31 pleas, a process that took eight minutes.
Menary told him it was “inevitable that there will be a custodial sentence of some length” when he is sentenced on 15 and 16 December. He is understood to be facing a jail term of more than 10 years.
DCI John Fitzgerald of Merseyside police, said it was only “sheer luck” that no one was killed by Doyle’s “reckless actions”. He added: “It is hard to forget the shocking scenes from that day. What should have been a day of celebration for the city turned into a distressing and frightening experience, which we know continues to have a physical and psychological impact on many people.”
The courtroom at Liverpool crown court was packed with relatives of the injured as well as members of the defendant’s family.
Doyle claimed he had panicked and was afraid for his life after some in the crowd attempted to stop his two-tonne vehicle as it hit fans. That explanation was rejected by prosecutors, who believed he had lost his temper and driven in rage in an attempt to break through the crowd.
The Guardian understands that Doyle told police he saw one onlooker with a knife and feared he would be stabbed – an explanation not accepted by detectives. He also claimed to have been struck by a bottle or glass, causing alcohol to get in his eyes. This was later disproved.
The seven-minute assault was brought to a halt when a passerby managed to get in the rear of Doyle’s vehicle as it stopped briefly beside him. When Doyle tried to accelerate, the man grabbed the gear stick and held it in park before the driver was pulled from the vehicle and arrested.
Footage posted immediately online showed an act of violence so shocking and seemingly indiscriminate that onlookers initially feared it was a terrorist attack. On social media, the speculation was instant: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far-right agitator known as Tommy Robinson, told his 1.7 million followers on X that it was a “suspected terrorist attack”.
Conversely, one stunned senior official told the Guardian in the hours following the incident: “It was road rage – a moment of madness.”
Though he was arrested initially on suspicion of drug driving, tests showed Doyle was sober. He had driven into Liverpool from his home six miles (10km) away in Croxteth to pick up his friend’s family.
Rob Darke, who suffered life-changing injuries, said he thought it was a terror attack when he heard screaming and shouting and “people coming flying towards me”.
He told Sky News: “I thought it was terrorists. That’s the first thing that came into my head. Who else would do a thing like that? There was people lying about all over the place. It was like a bomb had gone off … It was carnage everywhere … people crying and screaming.”
Darke, who used a wheelchair for three months and is now undergoing counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder, said he could hear “thumps from the car as people were being run over”, adding: “It was horrific.”
Neighbours described Doyle as a respectable family man. He served in the Royal Marines in the early 1990s before leaving the military to work in IT and cybersecurity.
He is said to have previously worked for an NHS trust and a large UK wealth management firm and run two now-dissolved companies – one of which involved headwear inspired by the actor Vin Diesel.
The social media accounts he followed included those of Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Andrew Tate, the self-styled “misogynist influencer”.
Sarah Hammond, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said Doyle’s actions had caused “unimaginable harm” and “brought chaos upon a community”.
