Liverpool driver sentenced to over 21 years in prison for injuring 130 at Premier League parade

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A British man who injured more than 130 people by plowing his car into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans during May’s Premier League victory parade was jailed for 21½ years on Tuesday, after admitting 31 criminal charges over the incident.

Paul Doyle drove into the mass of fans — hitting adults and children, who bounced off his vehicle or were dragged underneath it — simply because he lost his temper, prosecutors said.

The 54-year-old last month pleaded guilty to charges including nine counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and 17 counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm, on what would have been the first day of his trial.

Prosecutor Paul Greaney on Monday said Doyle was “a man in a rage whose anger had completely taken hold of him” when he deliberately drove at jubilant fans, injuring 134 people, including eight children.

A police officer shouts during the victory parade for Liverpool’s Premier League title win on May 26. (Darren Staples/AFP/Getty Images)

“He not only caused injury on a large scale, but he also generated horror in those who had attended what they had thought would be a day of joyfulness,” Greaney said.

His lawyer, Simon Csoka, told the court: “The defendant is horrified by what he did … he is remorseful, ashamed and deeply sorry for all those who were hurt or suffered.”

Act ‘defies ordinary understanding’: judge

Doyle sat in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court as Judge Andrew Menary said: “It is almost impossible to comprehend how any right-thinking person could act as you did.

“To drive a vehicle into crowds of pedestrians with such persistence and disregard for human life defies ordinary understanding,” Menary said.

Greaney told the court on Monday that around a million people had come out to celebrate Liverpool’s 20th English league title, watching an open-top bus parade featuring the team and its staff with the Premier League trophy.

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Man arrested after car slams into crowd at Liverpool FC parade

British police have arrested a 53-year-old man after a car plowed into a crowd of Liverpool FC fans celebrating the club’s Premier League trophy parade. Several people were rushed to hospital.

In the space of 77 seconds at nearly 6 p.m., Doyle plowed into the crowd while shouting, swearing and beeping his horn as he repeatedly struck pedestrians, court heard.

One of Doyle’s victims was Anna Bilonozhenko, who was struck by his Ford Galaxy and required surgery for a fractured knee. She had left Ukraine for Britain in 2024.

“We came to this country because of the war in our homeland, hoping to finally feel safe,” she said in a statement read on her behalf. “At first, we did but now that feeling has been taken away … it feels like losing our safety all over again.”

Man who stopped vehicle called ‘outstandingly brave’

Others who were caught up in the incident described the long-term effects on themselves and their loved ones, saying they were unable to work, care for their families, be in crowded places or watch Liverpool matches.

Doyle was briefly a member of the Royal Marines in the early 1990s before being discharged after several convictions for violence, although prosecutors said that by the time of the incident he was a “family man” who had turned his life around.

It was another former soldier, Daniel Barr, who stopped Doyle’s vehicle by jumping into the back of the car and putting it into park, actions Menary said were “outstandingly brave” and prevented further injuries and possibly saved lives.

Specialist prosecutor James Allison said Barr was “a man who can truly be described as a hero.”

Barr, however, said in an interview with the BBC before Doyle was sentenced that he was not a hero and every man he saw “was trying to do the same.”