Veteran tells how Liverpool parade attacker bit through his ear in vicious assault

"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."

"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."

Paul Doyle, then 23 and later convicted for the Liverpool parade attack, bit and chewed part of Stuart Lucas's ear during a 1994 assault at an M6 service station in Lancashire. Lucas, a Royal Navy reservist who intervened as Doyle attacked younger sailors travelling to join HMS Dovey, restrained Doyle in a bear hug until Doyle sank his teeth into Lucas's ear and spat out the chunk. Other sailors recovered the piece and medics initially reattached it, but later treatment in Glasgow found the ear beyond recovery. Lucas stood shocked with blood gushing from his head and required ambulance care.

Read at www.independent.co.uk