M9/M80 crash that killed two teens happened after car 'skidded on greasy corner'

Two teenagers were killed when a car in which they were passengers skidded and then over-corrected on a known “greasy corner” leaving a motorway interchange, a court has heard.

Charles Gray, then 17, was taken to hospital with serious injuries after the Vauxhall Corsa, which he was driving, hit a lorry and then a crash barrier on the A91 just after leaving Bannockburn Interchange on the M9/M80.

His rear seat passengers, Jayden McConnell, 17, and Kyle Marshall, 19, both of St Ninians, Stirling suffered multiple injuries and died at the scene. A female teenager in the front passenger seat was also injured but survived.

An eyewitness told a jury that Gray had been driving normally before losing control.

The collision occurred at about 3.50 pm on March 17 last year.

The eyewitness, Sean Meiklejohn, 32, said he saw what happened in the rear view mirror of his own car as he came off the interchange in front of Gray’s black Corsa.

Mr Meiklejohn, a joiner, said: “It pulled onto the roundabout behind me and followed me round to the same junction and that’s where it spun off.”

Prosecutor Anna Robertson asked: “At that point did you have any concerns?”

Mr Meiklejohn said: “No. He was just driving normal in my opinion.”

Mr Meiklejohn said it had been raining, and the road was damp.

He told Ms Robertson: “I didn’t feel he was speeding. I know that corner can be greasy on occasions and I had my family in the car.

“I came off the roundabout and I looked in my rear view mirror and I saw the black Corsa come round the corner and it skidded.

“I saw him over-correct and the car going from side to side.

“I looked back in my mirror again and saw the car bounce about off the barrier.

“He drifted over the road. I think he just crossed the line.”

Mr Meiklejohn said that when he saw the Corsa spin, he assumed it had hit the oncoming lorry, a large tipper.

Giving evidence as the trial began at Stirling Sheriff Court on Tuesday, Mr Meiklejohn added: “I’d say it [the Corsa] wasn’t speeding, [but] driving too fast for the conditions. It was damp and greasy.”

He told Tony Graham KC, counsel for Gray, that when he was a young driver, he had also experienced his car “slide a bit” at the same corner.

He said: “It took me by surprise. I was lucky and it wasn’t too bad. It was greasy at the time.”

Gray, of Bannockburn, denies causing his passengers’ deaths and injuries by careless driving.

The jury heard how Gray had a rating on the Glasgow Coma Scale of just three – the same as a dead person – when paramedics arrived by chance at the scene soon after the crash happened.

Paramedic team leader Sarah McArthur, 41, said she and a colleague were taking a patient to hospital when they came across the incident.

She said she found the Corsa “quite smashed up” and radioed for backup, including an air ambulance.

She said: “It was a long time, it felt, before other emergency services arrived.”

The two rear seat passengers were dead, while Gray was unconscious, with a weak pulse, and wasn’t breathing until she and her colleague opened his airway.

She said Gray had a significant head injury, significant trauma to his torso and signs of internal bleeding, and suspected neck and pelvis injuries.

When the helicopter arrived with a trauma consultant, she and her colleague helped get him aboard and he was flown to hospital.

Earlier, Lucy Fitzpatrick, 23, who gave evidence that she had been driving to Stirling University directly behind the Corsa, said she would not say it was being driven recklessly, but “slightly naively for the conditions”.

The trial, before Sheriff Euan Gosney and jury, continues.