Copyright dailystar
It was a Friday evening in the leafy suburbs of Woolton, and on Stonyhurst Road, the family had come together to mark Susan O'Donovan's 70th birthday celebration . Her daughter, Susanne Lewzey, was hosting the gathering , laying on a spread of hot and cold treats from Costco, whilst drinks were freely flowing and Barry White - one of her mum's beloved artists - serenaded guests through the Bluetooth speaker. In the kitchen, Susan's son Martin was linking arms with his niece, swaying to the music whilst telling her how deeply he adored her. He had made an uncommon journey back from Birmingham, where he currently resided, specially for his mother's milestone birthday, and was encountering his sister's partner of 19 months, Stephen Bates, for the very first time. Almost immediately, the pair were hitting it off spectacularly, as though they'd been mates for decades, connecting over tumblers of vodka and Red Bull whilst knocking back Jagerbombs, reports the Liverpool Echo . Other guests couldn't help but observe that the duo had formed what could only be described as a "bromance" with each other. Stephen appeared to be the most recent in a lengthy succession of individuals to fall under the spell of the effortless charisma possessed by the man who, during a previous period living in North Wales, had lovingly earned the nickname "Scouse Martin" amongst regulars in Flintshire's local boozers. An enthusiast of the great outdoors and lengthy mountain hikes, he felt genuinely comfortable amidst the wild landscape and within a community where he swiftly became a central figure. The publican of the Royal Oak in Caerwys, a tiny village with just over 1,000 residents nestled between St Asaph, Denbigh and Holywell, recalled: "I can see him now, strolling through the door, that familiar cheeky grin spreading across his face. You always knew when Martin was truly engaged in a conversation. He'd grab your arm, maybe tug on your sleeve or the hem of your shirt, his eyes alight as he passionately made a point or launched into one of his legendary stories about his wild past. "He had a way of drawing you in, of making you feel the urgency and the humour of whatever he was sharing. He wasn't just someone who frequented the pub, he was woven into the fabric of this place." Undoubtedly having been equally entertained by Martin's tales during the height of the celebration, Bates confided to his girlfriend: "I love your brother. He's great." It seemed utterly impossible that within mere hours, the pair would be exchanging blows in the front garden. The idea that shortly afterwards, tragedy would tear through the party was simply beyond imagination. Yet on the evening his mother marked her special birthday, Martin was left fighting for his life on the tarmac after an enraged Bates deliberately ploughed his Ford Fiesta into him before running him down. In the small hours of the next day, doctors would declare him dead at the hospital. He was just 47 years old. Later that year, on what would have been Martin's 48th birthday, his family and friends assembled in the public gallery of courtroom 31 at Liverpool Crown Court as Bates faced trial accused of his murder. Having been on the drink since mid-afternoon, by roughly 10pm on April 18 this year, Bates was thoroughly intoxicated. This marked the first occasion he had encountered many of Susanne's relatives, with the spirits and Stella Artois perhaps serving as Dutch courage to calm his jitters. Whilst Bates hadn't yet kicked off at the celebration, he appeared to be heading towards becoming a pest. Keen to maintain harmony during what was, ultimately, her mum's birthday bash, his girlfriend discreetly pulled him aside in the lounge and softly proposed that he might wish to ease off and clear his head with some water. However, Bates, who worked as a project coordinator with homeless and vulnerable people at the Whitechapel Centre in Everton, took umbrage. Susanne would subsequently inform detectives: "I've never seen him that drunk. If we go out, we have two or three. I've never seen him bladdered or heavily drunk before, but he was. He was very drunk. "I thought, he's starting to get on people's nerves. I didn't want to make a fuss. I said, 'come and sit in the living room, have a sit down for 10 minutes'. I said 'nobody's complaining, but you've had a lot to drink babe, you need to have a little chill and have some water for a bit'. "He said, 'do you want me to go home then, I'm a k***head?'. He started to get in a mood. That snowballed then. I said, I don't want you to go home, there's no problem. You've had a lot to drink. It's my mum's birthday party, and I want to enjoy it. You can either have a sit down and chill or I'll order you a taxi. He said 'I'll go, I'm walking'." At that point, Bates had been staying with his mother on Herondale Road in Mossley Hill, which was well over an hour's trek away, particularly challenging for someone who'd been drinking. Susanne felt sympathetic and arranged an Uber for him, but he declined the ride and demanded to drive himself home instead. Naturally worried, Susanne prevented him from accessing his vehicle, telling him: "I love you. You're going to kill yourself or someone else. You're not getting in this car, end of." However, Bates remained determined to leave. Consequently, Susanne called upon his new closest friend for assistance. Initially, it appeared Martin had successfully calmed the situation. She remembered: "They were just sitting there talking, calm. Everything was calm. I don't know how long later it was, they came together into the hall, the front door, my brother first then Stephen. I don't know what got said. It went from being calm to them fighting. They were literally just battering each other in the garden. I was like, what the hell? I didn't understand what had happened." Ring doorbell camera footage from the semi-detached property captured the two men exchanging blows next to Susanne's vehicle on the drive before tumbling to the ground, where they continued to scuffle and grapple until they were pulled apart. Even after being separated, Bates carried on with his tirade of abuse: "Look at you. You're a f****** p****. You're a c***. You're all c****. I'm getting my car, no one's f****** telling me. This is not gonna be the same again after this. All your family are c****." At this point, another of Martin's sisters, Natalie O'Donovan, intervened and offered to drive Bates home in his own vehicle to bring the chaos to an end once and for all. Eventually, he accepted. Susanne revealed: "I was just fuming that they'd been fighting. It was my mum's birthday. I'm livid. This was supposed to be a nice party. "My brother came up and said, 'I'm so sorry we ended up fighting, but I can't be having him threatening my sister, he's out of order'. I was like, 'I'm not even mad at you, I appreciate what you've done, but it's just not on, I don't want that here'. He was like, 'I love you and I'll protect you'. I said there won't be an issue, because he's not coming back, I don't want to speak to him ever again. That was that, I thought." The 12-minute journey across South Liverpool from Woolton to Mossley Hill in the 58-plate Fiesta was filled with tension. Bates, still fuming from the altercation, launched into a furious tirade: "I'm gonna kill your brother. Do you think he's gonna get away with that, punching me? I'm gonna pay someone to come and get your brother. He's getting it." Natalie described her passenger's behaviour: "As soon as he got in the car, literally for the whole car journey, all he done was threaten to kill my brother. I said, 'Stephen, you've caused the whole thing, it's been a drunken fight, you need to go home and get some rest'. His words were, 'I'm gonna pay someone to come and get your brother'. "It was all these threats from Woolton village to Mossley Hill. I said, 'do me a favour, have a little respect for me, promise you won't go back there and cause any trouble, if you want to fight him, give him a call in a few days, have a one to one fight with him'. He was just like, 'he's getting it'. He would be in a verbal rage, then, when I looked into his eyes, he was calm for a minute. "I don't think anyone would ever take that they would literally do that. At that moment in time, I believed he was angry. I didn't take [the threats] seriously at the time. They were serious, but I didn't assume he was gonna do it. "If I was psychic, I would have kept the keys. I didn't think anyone in the family would have been capable of what he done. If he'd said 'I'm going to go and murder your brother with my car', of course I would have." Oddly, Bates gave Natalie false directions to Barndale Road, the street adjacent to where he actually lived, where the pair stopped. Having apparently "calmed down to an extent", and believing he was now safely home, she gave him his car keys back and waited for a taxi to return her to the celebration. Within moments, Bates drove off rapidly in the vehicle. Understandably worried, Natalie alerted Susanne by phone but, in just five minutes, he had already made it back to Stonyhurst Road. Bates turned up precisely as she emerged from her front door, where Martin was sat alone on the garden wall, sipping from a pint glass. At the other end of the phone line, Natalie heard a "heart wrenching scream". Susanne said: "I was just about to say to him, 'Martin, he's got in his car'. I literally just opened it, and his car appeared. His car just appeared. It went right into the wall. "Within a split second, my brother had jumped up. He basically jumped off the wall, because he'd seen the car, and ran to dodge the car. He went to hit him, stopped, turned and just ran him straight full over, and I mean, like full blast. I went ballistic. I could see my brother face down under his car. He was still revving it, trying to carry on. I thought, he's going to run over him again with the back wheels. "I was just banging on the driver's window like, 'stop, stop'. He was just like, nothing. I was terrified. I opened the driver's door and started hitting him, saying 'stop, stop, he's under the car'. I grabbed the keys out of the ignition. He just looked at me and got out the car. I don't know where he went. I never seen him again. "From that point, all I could see was my brother face down under the car. I rang an ambulance straight away. My cousins and uncles came out and lifted the car. He was in a terrible state. The blood was everywhere. "There was loads of commotion in the street. Everyone was hysterical. Then the paramedics came. There was loads of police. I could just tell straight away that he was almost dead, basically. They were working on him for ages." Meanwhile, Natalie returned in an Uber, recalling the journey: "I was saying to the taxi driver, 'please can you hurry up, something's happened'. It maybe took approximately 10 minutes, tops. I just ran out the taxi. "In that instant, I realised. I looked straight forward. Martin was in the middle of the road. You could see, he had blood everywhere. I knew straight away. I knew as soon as I seen him, with the blood and everything. I just remember running over to Stephen. I was like, 'what have you done?'. "I never thought that was gonna happen. I didn't think he was gonna go back. Maybe I thought he'd end up driving into a wall or something. I didn't think much. In the moment, I'm just trying to get home." Paramedics arrived at the scene of "panic and anger" on Stonyhurst Road, immediately jumping into action to try and save the critically injured Martin. He suffered two cardiac arrests even before he could be transported to hospital. Sadly, the severe injuries he sustained to his head, chest and abdomen proved too much. He was pronounced dead at 4.32am on 19 April 2025. Seven minutes post-collision, at 11.47pm, Bates himself dialled 999. He informed the operator: "I've ran somebody over. I don't know whether they're f****** dead or alive. You need an ambulance or something. I think they're dead. They're not breathing, I don't think. "We had an argument, and then I've ran him over. You need to send someone quick. I'm staying here. I've done the crime , and I've... I'll f******... He's on the floor. I don't know. You need to send someone quick." Bodycam footage from the attending officers showed Bates being handcuffed on the pavement while using his phone, stating: "I know, I know. It's alright. I'm not going." Once inside an unmarked police car, he was heard responding to his caution with: "Yeah, I know what you're gonna say. It's alright kid. Don't f******.. Yeah, I know. Tell me. I know. I've done f****** nothing wrong here. Alright. Go 'ed. Do it." Bates was subsequently informed that he would need to take a roadside breath test, to which he responded: "Just breathalyse me. It doesn't matter. Just breathalyse me. I know what I've done, and what I've done is wrong. I know. F****** f****** up, and that's it. I'm over the limit, that's it." However, Bates seemed to resist taking the test there and then, stating: "Do it at the station. I don't want to do it now. Just do it at the station. I'm f***** anyway. Just do it at the station. I'm not refusing." Despite his initial reluctance, Bates did eventually comply with the test and recorded an initial reading of 99 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath, nearly triple the legal limit. Further footage reportedly showed him visibly upset in the back of a police van en route to Belle Vale Police Station. Dressed in a navy blue G-Star Raw gilet over a beige jumper, he confessed to the officers: "I'm terrified. I'm terrified. I know I'm going to prison. I know, I know I'm going to prison. I'm f****** s****** myself. It's f****** terrifying. I f***** up." After undergoing further breathalyser tests once in custody, Bates lamented: "F******ruined my life, haven't I? My life's ruined." While an officer attempted to comfort him, saying, "we don't know yet, do we?", Bates held his head in his hands as he continued: "No, it is. My whole life is ruined. F****** hell, my life has gone. What the f***. What the f***. My whole life is f****** ruined." Six months later, in the witness box at the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts , Bates' earlier confidence had completely vanished. Dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and navy blue tie, he looked subdued, keeping his head down almost constantly and offering little more than single-word answers as he testified before the jury of three men and nine women. During questioning by Andrew Haslam KC, Bates claimed he had gone back to Stonyhurst road to "try to sort his relationship out" and insisted he hadn't spotted Martin on the wall before drunkenly ploughing into him whilst trying to park outside. When asked about the moment he first realised he'd hit his girlfriend's brother, he seemed to get upset as he answered: "When I got out the car and I saw his legs under the car. Just total shock." During cross-examination, prosecuting barrister John Benson KC suggested that he had spotted Martin sitting on the wall and purposely aimed his vehicle at him. But Bates responded: "No, I didn't. I didn't. That's alls I can say, that I didn't see him." When questioned whether the "red mist had descended on him", he stated "there was no red mist to descend". As Mr Benson claimed that he "had a fit of extreme anger that temporarily clouded his judgement", he replied: "No, I didn't." The prosecution proceeded to highlight that Bates had managed the approximately three-mile trek from Barndale Road without mishap, despite his intoxicated condition, before the collision occurred. Yet he insisted: "I don't know what state I was in. It's a journey that I do all the time. It would have just been autopilot. "I don't know where he was, so I didn't see him. Why would I know where he was? I didn't see him. I went back to see Susanne." Bates continued to characterise Martin as "just a good lad" and remarked about their scuffle: "It was a drunken brawl. I don't know what the reason was, why we started fighting. I think he hit me first outside, from the camera footage." Addressing the menacing words during the journey home, Mr Benson stated: "You were obsessed, seething about what Martin O'Donovan had done to you, weren't you? He punched you in front of his family and all of the other guests. And you were going to have none of that, were you?". However, Bates responded "it was just a fight, it was just a fight". He subsequently rejected claims of "feeling belittled" after the confrontation before Mr Benson declared: "You were in a state of heightened anger and excitement about what had happened, and you didn't let it lie. As soon as you managed to get the car keys, you got into the driver's seat and you sped off. "What's more, you continued at a fast pace to get to Stonyhurst Road, such that Susanne Lewzey couldn't believe the time it had taken you to come back to her home. Why were you going so quickly? What did you think you were going to be gaining? Susanne Lewzey wasn't going to leave the house. What was the huge urgency?". Bates responded: "I just wanted to sort things out between me and Susanne. I wanted to sort things out with my girlfriend." But Mr Benson continued: "You knew full well that the situation was beyond being sorted out. Did you say to Natalie at any stage before you left, 'tell Susanne I'm really sorry, can we speak tomorrow?'." Bates replied "I can't remember" and, when asked why he "didn't ring her himself", meekly added "don't know". Mr Benson then said: "I suggest that, if you genuinely wanted to patch things up with Susanne, and that was the reason for you going to her home, you would have made a call, or, at the very least, sent her a WhatsApp. 'I'm so sorry, I really love you, it won't happen again'. "But you didn't, did you? That is because you had no intention of going back to speak to Susanne. You intended to go back to finish the business, didn't you?". But Bates said "no, I didn't". He then remained silent and shook his head when Mr Benson added: "And so your case is that this was a completely unintended collision with Martin O'Donovan, which has made you feel horrible because he has died." Mr Benson proceeded to draw attention to a crucial part of Bates' 999 call, specifically when he informed the operator "we had an argument, and then I've ran him over". The KC remarked: "When you made that 999 call, the punch up with Martin O'Donovan, it was history, wasn't it? You've drawn a line under it. No interest any further. "Why did you think the operator would want to know you'd had an argument? What possible relevance could it be? In your mind, the two were connected. At the time, you were associating having run him over with the argument. "Because, if you're right, the argument had nothing whatsoever to do with it. You've moved on, you're not angry. You've had an accident. You could have said what happened, 'I was trying to park my car and I've accidentally run him over'. Why did you say, 'we've had an argument then I've run him over'?". Bates replied: "I don't know why I've said it. I was in shock. I don't know. I was in shock and drunk." Stephen Bates was convicted of murdering Martin O'Donovan on Monday this week after a fortnight-long trial, with the jury delivering their verdict by a majority of 10 to two following 13 hours and 17 minutes of deliberation. Shouts of "yes" echoed from the public gallery, whilst the accused, dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and navy blue tie, remained with his head lowered in the dock as several of his supporters were spotted weeping. Judge Neil Flewitt KC, who oversaw the proceedings, informed him: "As I am sure that you appreciate, the only sentence I can, by law, pass upon you is a sentence of imprisonment for life. I have to determine the minimum term you will have to serve before you can be considered for release on parole." Bates will now appear before the same court later this month to receive his sentence for what was an utterly senseless murder. In a drunken and childish burst of fury, having been humiliated in the altercation and faced with his relationship falling apart, he turned what should have been a joyous family celebration into a tragic catastrophe. Martin had "lived his life by the motto, 'keep smiling'". Yet his loved ones have now lost a man who his murderer must have recognised, even during their brief acquaintance, possessed the extraordinary ability to "light up any room with his humour and presence".
