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 swearing 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.
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“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 Sergeant 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.
Doyle sobbed as prosecutors detailed the crime, using graphic footage and reading emotional statements from dozens of victims.Credit: X/The Telegraph
Defence 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”.
AP
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