Teenage girls in 90mph crash after secret date with two married men
A TEENAGER suffered serious injuries after her friend lost control of her car at high speed – while pursuing two married men with whom they had been having a secret date.
Chloe Duncan was seen driving at 90 miles per hour before the car spun out of control and flipped several times.
Jessica Rooney, 19, wept as she recalled the crash which left her with foot-long scars on her front and back, plus six metal screws and three plates in her back. She told Perth Sheriff Court she and nursery worker Duncan, now 20, had met Dale McBain, 26, and his friend Jack Conway in a park on the evening of the crash, on June 3, 2018.
When the men set off from Coupar Angus, Perthshire, to return to Forfar, Angus, in Mr McBain’s white Audi, Duncan pursued them in her Ford Fiesta.
Miss Rooney told the court: ‘She was trying to catch up with them. It was pitchblack. Chloe’s speed was the cause of the crash. It was 90 miles per hour. I only looked at the speedo when I knew the corner was coming up. The car was speeding up more and more as the bend was coming closer.
‘She hit the brake and the car juddered and hit the kerb and went up in the air. We were screaming. The car was out of control. It went over the hedge and into the field and rolled. It landed on my side and Chloe was hanging down on me. I was scared.
‘Chloe didn’t want to call the police for some reason. She wanted to call Dale to come back. I felt sore but I didn’t know how bad I was. It felt like my ribs were crushed.
‘The boys came back. He told me to get my story straight and say he wasn’t with us.’
Ground worker Mr McBain, who drove the girls to hospital, told the court he did not want his partner – now his wife – to find out he had been secretly meeting a then 18-year-old girl and her 17-year-old friend.
He admitted asking them to lie, adding: ‘We shouldn’t have been with the girls.’
Duncan, of Dundee, denied driving dangerously and at excessive speed and causing serious injury to her friend. She was found guilty of a lesser charge of careless driving.
On Tuesday, Sheriff William Wood banned Duncan, who now has a six-month-old baby, from driving for six months and fined her £600.
He told her: ‘You were both very lucky that night.’