LONDON (AP) — A driver who injured more than 130 people when he plowed his car into a crowd of soccer fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League championship was sentenced Tuesday to over 21 years in prison.
Paul Doyle rammed his minivan through a sea of fans on May 26 in two minutes of horror that ended only when a bystander got in the vehicle and forced it into park. It came to a rest atop people.
“You struck people head-on, knocked others onto the bonnet, drove over limbs, crushed prams and forced those nearby to scatter in terror," Judge Andrew Menary told Doyle in Liverpool Crown Court. “You plowed on at speed and over a considerable distance, violently knocking people aside or simply driving over them, person after person after person."
Prosecutors said Doyle flew into a fury because he couldn’t get where he was going fast enough to pick up friends who had attended the parade.
Doyle sobbed during much of the two-day sentencing as prosecutors detailed the crime, using graphic video footage and reading emotional statements from dozens of victims.
Doyle, 54, pleaded guilty last month to 31 counts, including dangerous driving and multiple counts of attempting or causing grievous bodily harm and intentional wounding.
Footage from his dashboard showed terrified people trying to scramble to safety before being knocked aside, tossed in the air or slipping under his bumper.
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 using the F-word 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.
“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 Sgt. 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.
Defense 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.”
This version corrects to say he was sentenced to over 21 years.
A prison truck arrives at Liverpool Crown Court in Liverpool, England, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (Peter Powell/PA via AP)
FILE - Forensic officers examine the site where a British man plowed a minivan into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans who were celebrating the city's Premier League championship, injuring more than 45 people in Liverpool, England, May 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super, File)
FILE - Police guards the site where a 53-year-old British man plowed a minivan into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans who were celebrating the city's Premier League championship Monday, injuring more than 45 people in Liverpool, England, Tuesday, May 27, 2025.(AP Photo/Jon Super, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting on Tuesday following mixed data on the economy’s strength, which did little to clear uncertainty about where interest rates may be heading.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading and remains a bit below its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 4 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
Treasury yields also held relatively steady, following an initial swing, after one report said the U.S. unemployment rate was at its worst level last month since 2021, but employers also added more jobs than economists expected. A separate report, meanwhile, said that an underlying measure of strength for revenue at U.S. retailers grew more in October than economists expected.
The mixed reports initially sent Treasury yields lower in the bond market. The knee-jerk reaction among investors was that the data could encourage the Federal Reserve to see the slowing job market as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than high inflation, and cut interest rates further in 2026. But yields quickly recovered some of those dips and drifted up and down.
What the Fed does with interest rates is a top driver for Wall Street because lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, even if they also may worsen inflation. A report coming on Thursday will show how bad inflation was last month, and economists expect it to show prices for U.S. consumers continue to rise faster than anyone would like.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.18%, where it was late Monday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 3.50% from 3.51%.
Also diminishing the effect of Tuesday’s reports was the possibility that the federal government’s recent shutdown may have distorted some of the data.
“The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term policy trajectory,” according to Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions in Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Helping to keep the overall market in check were continued, mixed swings for stocks that have been caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Oracle rose 1.1%, and Broadcom gained 1.6%. They both had dropped to sharp losses last week, even though both reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
But CoreWeave, which rents out access to top-of-the-line AI chips, fell 2.4%, and Nvidia slipped 0.2%.
Questions remain about whether all the spending that companies are broadly doing on AI technology will produce the kind of profits and productivity that make it worth the expense.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kraft Heinz rose 1.2% after saying Steve Cahillane, who was most recently CEO of Kellogg’s-owner Kellanova, will join as CEO on Jan. 1. After Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will lead the one that will hold onto the Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands.
Pfizer fell 1.6% after saying it expects to make between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion in revenue next year. That’s close to what analysts were expecting.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% after preliminary factory data showed manufacturing contracting slightly. Investors widely expect the Bank of Japan to announce an increase to interest rates later this week.
South Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.2%, while indexes fell 1.5% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A television displays a news conference with Fed chairman Jerome Powell on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
