Paul Doyle was jailed for 21 years and six months on Tuesday after he drove through Liverpool FC fans during their title-winning parade celebrations earlier this year
A man who was part of the same football team as Liverpool parade crash criminal Paul Doyle claimed he “knocked a man out cold” after he joked about his work at McDonald’s.
The man, who asked not to be named, said he had been a member of the Liverpool Christian Life Centre’s football team in the mid 90s and recalled Doyle as being at times a “lovely man” and, at others, “a monster”. He added the football team was not just for people from the church and that Doyle became involved after he was living with two people who regularly attended it.
The man claimed Doyle was a “brilliant goalkeeper” but that everyone there was “actively aware of his struggles. “Doyle would explosively react if he was not happy,” he added.
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The man continued to tell the Echo: “There were times when the game had to be called off and we had to apologise to the other team. On one occasion, I wasn’t there, but I heard a guy who was part of the church made a joke.”
“I don’t know if Paul was still studying at the time, but he was working as a manager at McDonald’s. The guy wasn’t having a go at him, he was just messing around, but I heard that Paul knocked him out cold. I was shocked. I felt responsibility and spoke to the guy and had to really apologise.”
Doyle was jailed for 21 years and six months on Tuesday after he drove through Liverpool FC fans during their title-winning parade celebrations. The court heard how Doyle used his car as a “weapon” when “in a rage” over the number of people in the road.
The man who knew Doyle back in the 90s added: “We knew about his early years. The fact he had major, major problems. They became our problems as well when he started to come to the church. But we also saw the other side of him.
“I regularly saw a really nice man. It’s so sad that there was such a lovely man there, but also a monster as well. I felt a responsibility for him at the time. I always knew I was out of my depth. When I saw the news and saw it was Paul, it was a worst case scenario.”
