The ex-Commando who mowed down more than 130 fans during Liverpool Football Club’s victory parade once bit off a man’s ear in a pub brawl and was kicked out of the Royal Marines for fighting, a court heard today.

Paul Doyle, 54, clocked up 10 previous convictions, including three serious assaults, as a young man which led to him being jailed on November 3 1994 – the day before his 23rd birthday – for 12 months.

But Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that, following Doyle’s release, seven months later, he managed to stay out of trouble for 30 years, taking steps to ‘live a positive and productive life.’

However, all that unravelled in seven shocking minutes on May 26 this year when he snapped and – in a fit of rage – ‘used his car as a weapon’ to plough into hundreds of supporters celebrating Liverpool FC’s Premier League title win.

‘In doing so, he not only caused injury on a large scale, but also generated horror in those who had attended what they had thought would be a day of joyfulness,’ Mr Greaney said.

Today it emerged that what happened in May was not the first time that Doyle’s violent temper had erupted and prompted him to lose control.

Between the ages of 18 and 22, the court heard, he was involved in drunken fights and other violence which repeatedly landed him in trouble with police.

Most shockingly, during one of those fights Doyle bit off a fellow sailor’s ear in a pub brawl.

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Paul Doyle was told he faces jail after driving his car into crowds at the Liverpool victory parade

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Pictured: Paul Doyle who was seen driving the car in Liverpool on May 26, 2025

By then, aged 21, he was serving with the Royal Marine Reserve, having been kicked out of the Marines proper after just 22 months for fighting, being violent towards a senior officer and other ill-disciplined behaviour.

The court heard that Doyle had joined the Army three years earlier, aged 18, first serving with the Royal Engineers, before passing out of the Royal Marine Commando Training Centre, also known as CTCRM, a year later, in March 1991.

Military sources said he served with 43 Commando, the unit based in Arbroath, Scotland, that helps secure the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

But he was discharged less than two years later, without ever seeing active service, effectively because he was unable to keep his temper under control.

‘Neither during his period in the Royal Engineers nor during his period in the Royal Marines did the defendant see active service,’ Mr Greaney said.

The court was told that Doyle was convicted of his first offence – a military charge equivalent to common assault – in December 1989, when he was just 18 and an apprentice in the Royal Engineers. He was punished by means of seven days’ detention.

Then, three months later, in March 1990, he was fined at Newport Magistrates’ Court, in South Wales, for a minor offence of dishonesty.

He joined the Marines the following year, but six months later, at the end of his 32-week Royal Marine training, at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, he ended up in a punch up after being thrown out of a nightclub.

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A court artist’s sketch of prosecution counsel Paul Greaney KC speaking as Paul Doyle wipes away tears as he appears at Liverpool Crown Court for sentencing on 31 offences

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Police officers investigate the scene of an incident in Water Street, at the end of the open-top bus victory parade for Liverpool’s Premier League title win on May 26 this year

‘The Police National Computer record indicates that he struck another person several times in the face with a clenched fist,’ Mr Greaney said.

‘In interview following his arrest in connection with the current offences, in May, the defendant said that he had a scuffle with men in a nightclub which resulted in him being thrown out.

‘The men he had scuffled with were waiting for him and he got the better of them.’

Doyle pleaded guilty to assault the following July and was fined £45 by magistrates in Exeter and ordered to pay his victim £1,500 compensation.

Before that case could get to court, however, Doyle was convicted of two more military offences less than two weeks apart, in February 1992.

During the first, he was fined £250 for using violence towards his superior officer.

Mr Greaney said details of the second offence in the service records were scant, but he was also fined another £250 for a breach of military discipline.

Doyle was placed on a formal warning by the Marines but his conviction for the assault outside the nightclub on July 2 that year appears to have been the final straw and led to his senior officer confirming that his ‘services were no longer required.’

‘In other words, the Royal Marines no longer wished to retain him,’ Mr Greaney added.

Doyle tried to appeal but less than three weeks later, on 22nd July 1992, he damaged a shop window and was convicted of another military offence of criminal damage. He was punished via a restriction of privileges for seven days.

He was ordered to leave in January the following year but continued to serve in the Royal Marine Reserve.

Still, it seems, he couldn’t keep his nose clean or his anger issues in check.

Seven months later, in July 1993, then aged 21, Doyle was again involved in a violent incident when he attacked another serviceman and bit off his ear in a drunken pub fight.

Mr Greaney said: ‘The offences involved the defendant biting off the ear of another man in a fight. When interviewed by the police in connection with the current offences, the defendant explained that he had become involved in a drunken fight with sailors.’

Before he could be convicted of that offence, Doyle committed two further minor offences for dishonesty and breaching the peace, in Aberdeen, for which he received community service.

When he eventually appeared before Preston Crown Court in connection with the ear-biting episode, Doyle was convicted of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm and of using threatening, abusive, insulting words or behaviour, and went to prison for the first time. The judge jailed him for 12 months.

He was released after serving just over half his sentence, in May the following year, and managed to keep his temper in check for 30 years.

Mr Greaney said that only served to make what happened last May ‘more shocking and tragic.’

‘The prosecution recognises that in the 30 years between his release from prison in May 1995 and his dreadful actions on 26th May 2025, the defendant had taken steps to live a positive and productive life,’ the barrister said.

‘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, a married father-of-three, of Croxteth, Liverpool, admitted 31 charges, including dangerous driving, affray and 29 GBH-related offences in connection with 29 injured fans.

He is facing a life sentence, which is expected to be handed down later today.