TL;DR
- Rob Darke attended Liverpool‘s victory parade with his sons when he was injured by a vehicle, initially fearing it was a terrorist attack due to the chaos surrounding him.
- Darke sustained a serious foot injury that required extensive medical treatment and left him with long-term physical and psychological effects, including PTSD.
- Paul Doyle has pleaded guilty to charges related to the incident, including wounding Darke with intent.
Paul Doyle latest: Ex-marine in tears as he pleads guilty after driving into Liverpool fans at victory parade | UK News
‘I thought it was terrorists’: Victim left with ‘life-changing injury’ tells of ‘carnage’
Rob Darke has been speaking exclusively to Sky News about what happened to him on 26 May.
He says he was attending Liverpool’s victory parade with his two sons, describing the experience as “absolutely fantastic”.
Everyone had had a few drinks, but there was “no animosity”, everyone was very friendly and it was a “great day”.
Darke was going home early because he had work the next day and “that’s when it happened”.
He says he heard “shouting and screaming” and “people coming flying towards me” and then “bang”.
“I just stepped off the curb and the car wheel crushed my foot,” he says
“The pain was absolutely incredible.”
He says: “I thought it was terrorists. That’s the first thing that came into my head. Who else would do a thing like that?”
“There was people lying about all over the place. It was like a bomb had gone off… it was carnage everywhere… people crying and screaming.”
Darke says he could hear “thumps from the car as people were being run over”, adding: “It was horrific.”
‘Life or limb’
He was taken to hospital to be “stitched up” but was left in “excruciating pain” when the injury became infected and rushed to A&E, where “it was life or limb”.
He says he was in a wheelchair for three months and had been left with a “life-changing injury” and is undergoing counselling for PTSD.
One of the 31 charges Paul Doyle pleaded guilty to was wounding Darke with intent.
Darke says: “Out of one and a half million people, why did it have to be me?”