Exposed by lipstick on airbag, crash mum who said husband was driving
A WOMAN who claimed her husband was at the wheel when she crashed their car was caught out when lipstick was found on the driver’s airbag.
Sarah Smith did not have a licence and was not insured to drive the VW Golf when she ploughed into the side of a house while pregnant with her first child by husband Mark.
He was not in the car but rushed to the scene after he was alerted to what had happened and insisted he had been the driver, a court heard.
Prosecutor Chris Baker told the jury Mrs Smith denied being the driver when she spoke to a traffic officer after the collision in January last year which caused £28,894 of damage to the house in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, and £11,384 of damage to the car.
But Mr Baker said the officer noticed the driver’s seat was pushed forward as though for someone small and there were marks on the airbag. ‘He thought the marks were blood but a subsequent examination showed they were make-up,’ said Mr Baker.
The couple maintained during police interviews that Mr Smith was driving but were charged with perverting the course of justice as well as fraud after a claim was made on his car insurance for the damage to the house and the VW.
In court the couple claimed Mr Smith clipped a kerb and lost control of the car with his wife in the passenger seat. She was forced over to the driver’s side as the car crashed, leaving the lipstick mark. But a forensic scientist’s report said: ‘The staining forming the apparent imprint of a nose and mouth was not smeared which suggests, in my view, that the imprint had been deposited as a full-face contact into the airbag, rather than contact involving movement as the individual moved between the seats.
‘Furthermore, considering the clear outline of the nose and mouth, the imprint would, in my view, have been made as a result of forceful contact when the airbag was inflated.’
The couple, from Sowerby, North Yorkshire, persuaded others to tell the jury they had seen 44-yearold Mr Smith behind the wheel.
Their lawyer said Mrs Smith would not have had time to think up a plan before police got to the crash scene. But jurors at Teesside Crown Court found the couple guilty of both the charges. Mr Smith was jailed for seven months on Tuesday. His wife, 22, received a seven-month sentence, suspended because she is pregnant with their second child.
Judge Deborah Sherwin told Mr Smith it had been ‘an ill-judged attempt’ to help his wife. Outside court Mrs Smith said they are appealing against the convictions.