A former Royal Navy reservist has described how the Liverpool parade attacker bit off part of his ear in an assault 31 years ago.
Stuart Lucas told the Daily Mail that Paul Doyle, who was on Tuesday jailed for 21 years and six months for mowing down dozens of Liverpool fans, chewed his ear and spat it out, leaving blood gushing from his head.
Mr Lucas had intervened to stop Doyle, who was then in the Royal Marines, from assaulting younger Royal Navy Reserve sailors at an M6 service station in Lancashire in 1994.
Doyle was one of two marines on a bus with 28 sailors travelling to Barry, South Wales, to join HMS Dovey and sail to Glasgow, the Daily Mail said.
Mr Lucas witnessed Doyle, then 23, “doing a flying kick which laid two of the lads out”.
The now 68-year-old then “gave him a bear hug, strapping his arms to his sides” which stopped Doyle and led to him falling down.
Mr Lucas told the Daily Mail: “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.
“But he could move his head and at that he promptly sunk his teeth into my ear and said, ‘let go’.”
Mr Lucas, a father-of-one who lives in East Lothian, Scotland, said the technique is called a “biter” in Liverpool. He said that Doyle could have inflicted it without biting through.
“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,” Mr Lucas added.
He said he stood in shock with blood gushing out of his head while other sailors started searching for the missing chunk of his ear.
Once it was found, Mr Lucas got in an ambulance and took his ear in a bag to hospital where it was reattached.
He said he was discharged and, after getting a train home, went to a hospital in Glasgow where medics unwrapped the bandage to find his ear was beyond recovery.
Mr Lucas, at the time studying for a masters at Strathclyde University, declined to have his ear rebuilt because it would have taken months.
Details of Doyle’s previous offences were outlined at his sentencing hearing at Liverpool Crown Court for the parade crash.
In October 1991, at the end of Doyle’s 32-week training period at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, 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, the court heard.
He was “discharged with services no longer required” in 1993, 22 months after enlisting, 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.
When interviewed earlier this year, Doyle said he had become involved in a drunken fight with sailors.
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.
