British banking executive gets 15 years for murdering teenager in Lisbon

A British banking executive has been jailed for 15 years for murdering a teenager in a horrific broken bottle attack.

University graduate Daniel Dunbar was found guilty of the savage killing in Lisbon’s trendy Bairro Alto neighbourhood after a stop-start trial which began at the start of March.

Last night the 30-year-old from Sidcup, Kent, was warned he faced an appeal as his victim’s family lawyer branded the prison sentence he received “too lenient.”

Dunbar had been told he could face up to 25 years behind bars after being arrested in the UK and extradited to Portugal.

He learned his fate following a read-out of the three trial judges’ decision at Lisbon’s specialised central criminal court and a subsequent 57-page written ruling made public on Friday.

Dunbar admitted assaulting victim Daniel Galhanas, 19, in the 14 October 2023 early-hours street attack but claimed he acted in self-defence in the belief one of his holiday pals had just been attacked by the man he killed.

He also insisted he had no idea he was holding the murder weapon he plunged into the teenager’s neck when he lashed out saying it ended up in his left hand by accident after he bumped into another friend carrying a bottle during the street altercation.

Dunbar and his five friends had clashed with a group of local lads they confronted after seeing them kicking and punching another man.

Shocking video footage of the horror attack showed police mechanic Galhanas, who the court ruled was not part of the local gang, collapsing to the ground in a pool of blood after suffering fatal injuries to his carotid artery and a jugular vein as the Brit killer and his pals fled.

In a withering dismantling of his defence, lead judge Armandina Silva Lopes said Dunbar showed “no hesitation” in attacking his victim who was left unable to react or defend himself because his assailant had hidden the broken glass bottle in his left hand.

She added: “The defendant acted insensitively with a clear and reckless indifference for his victim’s life.

“After delivering a violent blow to his neck and seeing the person he had injured was losing a lot of blood, he did nothing to help him and instead fled the scene.”

Calling Dunbar’s conduct “perverse”, although this description was contested by another of the three trial judges, Dr Silva Lopes concluded: “His actions were not carried out in self defence.”

As well as being jailed for 15 years, the Brit was also ordered to pay 200,000 pounds in compensation to his victim’s family.

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

Under Portuguese law rugby-playing Dunbar could have been jailed for between 12 and 25 years.

The fact he brought forward his return flight to the UK and left via Faro Airport on the Algarve to “escape police”, but also the fact he had no previous in Portugal, were among the factors taken into account to determine the final sentence which the trial judges described in their ruling as “fair, adequate and proportional.”

Dunbar told the Lisbon court on the first day of his trial he realised someone had died after seeing the video showing his horror attack after he left Portugal.

He admitted claiming he and his friends were met with violence after trying to intervene when they saw a stranger being assaulted: “I should have gone to the police instead of leaving the country but I was immature, I didn’t trust the police and I was afraid of being imprisoned.”

Shortly before his extradition it emerged Dunbar had been working in the Investor Management Department at the Royal Bank of Canada in a role “centred on legal compliance".

Companies House records show the city whiz kid previously ran his own company called Dunbar Eight Limited, when he described himself as a financial adviser.

Dunbar contested extradition claiming that he was suffering from PTSD, was a suicide risk and was mentally unstable after a series of injuries while playing rugby.

Relatives of the murder victim have always denied Galhanas was part of the gang the Brits confronted.

An online petition demanding “Justice For Daniel Galhanas” posted eight months after the fatal attack, addressed to Portugal’s then-president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Britain’s Ambassador to Portugal, said: “On 14 October 2023, at around 4am our son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend Daniel Filipe Lopes da Conceiçao Galhanas, only 19 years old, after a night out with friends celebrating one of their birthdays at a bar in Bairro Alto in Lisbon, was on his way home, accompanied only by a friend who witnessed everything that happened on that tragic night.

“They both came across what they thought was a fight, and finding themselves surrounded by those involved, Daniel, in an attempt to defend the girl who was with him and calm the situation, opened his arms as if asking for calm while repeating ‘STOP, STOP’ in English to the person wielding a broken bottle as a weapon.

“And it was at that precise moment that Daniel became the aggressor's target, who stabbed him in the throat with the bottle.

“Fully aware of what he had done and without even stopping for a minute to help, the attacker, a British national, fled immediately and in less than three hours was at an airport boarding a flight to his country of origin.”

It added: “Daniel was an honest, responsible young man and a friend to everyone, who always acted in the name of peace.

“Now there is a whole family torn apart, trying to survive an immeasurable grief.”

Joao Biscaia, the lawyer acting for Daniel’s family, said: “We consider the sentence imposed far too lenient given the seriousness of the facts, which are, moreover, well-described in the indictment.

“Even in comparison with other cases, the sentence is in fact disproportionate and therefore there is a firm intention to appeal.”