Brit banking executive, 30, is jailed for 15 years for killing teen in horrific broken bottle attack in Lisbon

A British banking executive has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing a teenager in a horrific attack with a broken bottle.

University graduate Daniel Dunbar was found guilty of the brutal murder in Lisbon’s popular Bairro Alto district after a stop-start trial that began in early March.

Last night the 30-year-old, from Sidcup, Kent, was warned he faced an appeal after his victim’s family lawyer described the prison sentence given to him as ‘too lenient’.

Dunbar was told he could face up to 25 years in prison after he was arrested in England and extradited to Portugal.

He learned his fate after three trial judges’ verdicts were read out at Lisbon’s specialized Central Criminal Court, followed by a 57-page written verdict made public on Friday.

Dunbar admitted attacking 19-year-old Daniel Galhanas in the street attack in the early hours of October 14, 2023, but claimed he acted in self-defence, thinking he was being attacked by the man one of his holiday companions had killed.

He also insisted that he had no idea he was holding the murder weapon, which he stuck in the teenager’s neck after he hit another friend who was carrying a bottle during a street fight, while saying the gun accidentally ended up in his left hand.

Dunbar and five friends had clashed with a group of local boys they encountered after they saw them kick and punch another man.

Daniel Galhanas (pictured) was 19 when he was killed with a broken glass bottle on the streets of Lisbon.

Shocking video footage of the horror attack shows police mechanic Galhanas, who the court ruled was not part of the local gang, collapsed in a pool of blood after suffering fatal injuries to his carotid artery and carotid artery as the British killer and his friends escaped.

Weakening his defence, chief judge Armandina Silva Lopes said Dunbar had ‘no hesitation’ in attacking his victim, who was left unable to react or defend herself because the attacker had concealed the broken glass bottle in his left hand.

He added: ‘The defendant acted insensitively with a blatant and reckless indifference to his victim’s life.

‘After delivering a severe blow to the neck and seeing the person he injured lose a lot of blood, he did nothing to help him and fled the scene.’

Describing Dunbar’s behavior as ‘perverse’, Dr. Silva Lopes concluded: ‘His actions were not carried out in self-defence,’ although this explanation was disputed by one of the three trial judges.

The Briton was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was also ordered to pay £200,000 compensation to his victim’s family.

The time Dunbar has spent in custody since his arrest in June 2024 will be taken into account in determining his release date. He was held behind bars in Portugal as a detainee after being extradited from the UK in May last year.

According to Portuguese law, rugby player Dunbar could be sentenced to between 12 and 25 years in prison.

The terrible moments when a Portuguese teenager was fatally stabbed in the neck were caught on camera

The fact that he brought forward his flight back to the UK and left Faro Airport in the Algarve to ‘evade the police’, as well as the fact that he had no previous criminal convictions in Portugal, were among the factors taken into account when determining the final sentence, which the trial judges described in their verdict as ‘fair, adequate and proportionate’.

Dunbar told the Lisbon court on the first day of his trial that he realized someone was dead after watching video of his horrific attack after leaving Portugal.

He admitted that he and his friends were subjected to violence after they tried to intervene when they saw a stranger being attacked: ‘I should have gone to the police instead of leaving the country, but I was immature, didn’t trust the police and was afraid of being jailed.’

Shortly before his extradition, it was revealed that Dunbar was working in a ‘legal compliance-focused’ role in the Royal Bank of Canada’s Investor Management Department.

Companies House records show the city’s child prodigy previously ran his own company, Dunbar Eight Limited, when he described himself as a financial advisor.

Dunbar objected to extradition, claiming he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, was at risk of suicide and was mentally unstable following a series of injuries while playing rugby.

Relatives of the murder victim have always denied that Mr. Galhanas was part of the gang the British confronted.

Eight months after the deadly attack, an online petition demanding ‘Justice for Daniel Galhanas’, addressed to Portugal’s then-president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and the British Ambassador to Portugal, read: ‘On October 14, 2023, at around 4 am, our son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend, Daniel Filipe Lopes da Conceiçao Galhanas, only 19 years old, celebrating one of his birthdays with friends. after one night. A bar in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto was returning home with only a friend who had witnessed everything that had happened that tragic night.

‘They both encountered what they thought was a fight, and finding themselves surrounded by the people involved, Daniel, in an attempt to defend the girl next to him and calm the situation, opened his arms as if to ask for calm, while repeating the English word ‘STOP, STOP’ to the person using the broken bottle as a weapon.

‘And that’s when Daniel became the target of the attacker, who stabbed him in the throat with the bottle.

‘The attacker, a British national who was fully aware of what he was doing and did not stop for a minute to help, immediately fled and boarded a flight to his country of origin at the airport in less than three hours.’

He added: ‘Daniel was an honest, responsible young man and always a friend of all who acted in the name of peace.

‘There is now an entire family torn apart, trying to escape immeasurable pain.’

Lawyer Joao Biscaia, acting on behalf of Daniel’s family, said: ‘Given the seriousness of the facts well explained in the indictment, we consider the sentence imposed to be too lenient.

‘Even compared to other cases, the sentence imposed is actually disproportionate and there is therefore a definite intention to appeal.’