According to authorities, two men have been sentenced to life in prison for the “cold and deliberate” shooting death of a father-of-two in “full daylight” on a street.
On the evening of July 1, 2021, Patrick Boyle, 26, was shot twice in the chest on Newway in Huyton.
After being transported to Whitson Hospital, he was subsequently declared dead.
At Liverpool Crown Court, Ben Doyle, 25, of Lyme Grove, Huyton, and Reuben Murphy, 26, of Oak Avenue, Newton-le-Willows, were determined to have committed murder.
Additionally, the two were found guilty of having a weapon and ammunition with the intent to endanger life.
In a victim statement read in court, Mr. Boyle’s girlfriend Ashleigh Dean described him as “a great gentle giant with a heart of gold” and said that because of these two individuals who took him from her, her entire world had “shattered into a million pieces.”
The two guys, according to Ms. Dean, “robbed our son of ever meeting his magnificent daddy,” she said. Ms. Dean was expecting at the time of the shooting.
He was never able to attend our first scan, discover what we were having, or see the delivery, she said.
She said that the two had deprived her and Mr. Boyle “of our future as a family” and made sure that there would be no pictures for her small kid to see “when he’s older of us together as a family.”
She said, “Paddy passed away four days before he turned 27.”
“I visited him at the mortuary with his birthday cards instead of celebrating his birthday.
“The toughest thing I’ve ever had to do was see him there.
The Friday after his birthday, we were supposed to travel to Cornwall, but I was in Ireland for his funeral.
The court sentenced 21-year-old Thomas Walker of Maiden Lane, Liverpool, to two years in jail after he pleaded to having ammunition without a weapons certificate.
Det Ch Supt Insp Steve McGrath said the shooting was “a cold and premeditated crime which culminated in the murder of a dad-of-two on a roadway in broad daylight” in a statement following the sentence.
In his words, Murphy and Doyle “continued to deny their participation in Patrick Boyle’s death, forcing his family and friends to face a criminal trial played out in public” and had not accepted their guilt.
They will now serve a significant length of time in prison for their crimes, he continued.
