Guilty, thugs who punched police officer to death
TWO men who punched an off- duty policeman to death on a Christmas night out were found guilty of manslaughter yesterday.
Former semi-professional footballer Andrew Taylor, 29, and Timmy Donovan, 30, attacked newlywed PC Neil Doyle a few weeks before he was due to go on honeymoon.
Yesterday, after the thugs were cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter, his widow Sarah said: ‘I will never forgive them for what they have done.
‘The hard part is not over for us. We now need to come to terms with what has happened and be left in private to grieve.’
Mr Doyle, 36, a constable since 2004, was fatally punched in the early hours of December 19 last year while out with colleagues in Liverpool.
Taylor denied throwing a ‘ piledriver’ punch which ruptured an artery in the officer’s neck but was convicted of punching another offduty officer, Robert Marshall.
In shocking CCTV footage, Mr Doyle could be seen staggering across the road and collapsing by the pavement in the wake of the attack. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. Donovan, who fled to Germany after the assault, was convicted of wounding PC Marshall with intent, after kicking and stamping on him as he lay on the ground.
Ex-footballer Christopher Spendlove, 30, who was alleged to have thrown a single punch at a third officer, PC Michael Steventon, was cleared of all charges.
Mr Doyle and his two colleagues, who both suffered head injuries, had left the Peacock bar in Seel Street at about 3am.
They were approached by Taylor, who asked, ‘Are you having a good evening, officer?’ – despite later claiming he did not know that Mr Doyle was a serving policeman.
A brawl then broke out, which prosecutors called ‘one-way traffic’, adding Mr Doyle was ‘ baited’ into the fight. The convicted men falsely claimed ‘everyone had piled in’.
Prosecutors had accused the defendants of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ and ‘each individually trying to save their own skin’.
Taylor, of Huyton, and Donovan, from Childwall, will be sentenced next month.