Six lives lost in tragedy... days before Christmas

THE rare legal bid for a private prosecution stems back to the tragedy on a typically busy Christmas shopping day in Glasgow almost two years ago.

Thousands of people were in the city centre on Monday December 22, 2014, visiting shops, restaurants and Christmas markets when a Glasgow City Council bin lorry turned into Queen Street at about 2.15pm.

The crew were chatting about their own Christmas plans but moments later driver Harry Clarke blacked out “like a light switch’’.

It took just 19 seconds for the tragedy to unfold and six people were killed and many more seriously injured as the truck mounted the pavement and careered along the road until it crashed into the Millennium Hotel.

All of those who died had been in the city centre preparing for Christmas – Erin McQuade and her grandparents Lorraine and Jack Sweeney had been out for lunch and shopping; Jacqueline Morton had finished work early and was on her way to pick up her granddaughters; Gillian Ewing was heading for the train back to Edinburgh with her daughter Lucy; and teacher Stephenie Tait was waiting to use a cash machine on Queen Street when the bin lorry mounted the pavement.

Ms Ewing, who lived in Cyprus, was in Scotland to spend her first Christmas with family in Edinburgh for four years and had travelled to Glasgow to replace a sentimental ring.

The Crown Office said there was insufficient evidence in law to raise criminal proceedings and fasttracked a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) into the crash.

The Crown Office again defended the decision not to prosecute the driver, with former Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC saying he had “no doubt the decision was the correct one in law’’.

Unsatisfied with the decision, lawyers for some of the victims’ families raised the possibility of a rare private prosecution of Mr Clarke – with permission granted for only two such prosecutions since 1900.

Determined to push on, the McQuade family, who lost three relatives in the crash, launched a private prosecution bid and were joined by the families of students Mhairi Convy and Laura Stewart who died in similar circumstances in 2010 when William Payne passed out at the wheel of his Range Rover.

They first appealed to the Crown Office to support the move but when that was rejected took the case to High Court judges, marking a new chapter in Scottish legal history.