Liverpool FC parade driver Paul Doyle 'bit through my ear and chewed it up'
A former Royal Navy reservist has described how Paul Doyle bit through part of his ear, ‘chewed it up and spat it out’.
Stuart Lucas, 68, told the Daily Mail that he had stepped in to stop Paul Doyle from assaulting younger Royal Navy Reserve sailors at a service station on the M6 in 1994.
The newspaper said that the altercation occurred after the younger men challenged Doyle, then in the Royal Marines, over his drunken behaviour. Doyle was handed a year-long jail sentence after the incident.
On Tuesday (December 16), Doyle, 54, was sentenced to 21 years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to 31 offences relating to seriously injuring people following Liverpool FC’s victory parade celebrations on May 26.
Prosecutors told the court that, in the space of just two minutes, Doyle’s Ford Galaxy – weighing 1.9 tonnes – had hit “well over 100 people” and he was “prepared to cause those in the crowd, even children, serious harm if necessary to achieve his aim of getting through”.
Liverpool Crown Court also heard how Doyle had a previous conviction for biting someone’s ear off.
Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, said 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. 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.
Recounting the 1994 incident at Charnock Richard services, in Lancashire, Stuart Lucas told the Daily Mail: “It was so painful I let go and then when I did let him go, he bit through it, chewed it up and spat it out.”
Doyle was one of two marines on a bus with 28 sailors travelling to Barry, South Wales, to join HMS Dovey and sail her to Glasgow, the newspaper said.
Mr Lucas said he was a killick, meaning a leading hand, on the trip and witnessed Doyle, then 23, “doing a flying kick which laid two of the lads out”.
Mr Lucas, now 68, said he then “gave him a bear hug, strapping his arms to his sides” which stopped Doyle and led to him falling down.
“I still had him in a bear hug which was good, everything seemed to be going well and he couldn’t move apart from swearing,” Mr Lucas explained. “But he could move his head and at that he promptly sunk his teeth into my ear and said, ‘let go’.”
Mr Lucas added: “I’m sure he was trying to gouge someone’s eye out as well. It was all very quick and pretty serious what he did.”
The father-of-one, who lives in East Lothian, said he stood in shock with blood gushing out of his head while other sailors searched for the missing part of his ear. Once found, Mr Lucas took his ear in a bag to hospital where it was reattached.
After being discharged and getting a train home, went to a hospital in Glasgow where medics unwrapped the bandage to find his ear was beyond recovery.
Mr Lucas, who was studying for a masters at Strathclyde University at the time, chose not to have his ear rebuilt because it would have taken months.
Details of Doyle’s other previous offences were revealed at his sentencing hearing at Liverpool Crown Court for the Liverpool parade incident.
The court heard that in October 1991, at the end of Doyle’s 32-week training period at the Commando Training Centre in Lympston, he had what he later described as a “scuffle” with men in a nightclub and, after he was thrown out, punched another person in the face several times. He 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.
Doyle served in the military for four years, starting with the Royal Engineers before enlisting in the Marines in 1991, but did not see active service. He was “discharged with services no longer required” in 1993, the court heard. He was said to have unsuccessfully challenged the discharge.
In November 1994, while serving with the Royal Marine Reserve, Doyle was jailed for 12 months for causing grievous bodily harm after biting off the ear of Mr Lucas.
Following his release from prison in 1995, Doyle was said to have “taken steps to live a positive and productive life”, going to university, working in positions of responsibility and having a family.