Teen cleared of causing death of two friends after car spun out on A91

The teenage driver of a car that spun out of control and hit a lorry has been cleared of causing the deaths of two of his friends.

Charles Gray was cleared of causing the deaths of his friends, Jayden McConnell, 17, and Kyle Marshall, 19, by careless driving in the collision on a “greasy corner” on the A91 near Bannockburn Interchange.

After a five-day trial, jurors took less than two and a half hours to find Gray, 19, not guilty.

Gray, then 17, had passed his test only the month before the incident, on St Patrick’s Day last year.

The court heard his 2006 Vauxhall Corsa had just left Stirling Services and went out of control on a wet road at about 3.50pm, shortly after leaving the roundabout and joining the A91.

It crossed the centre line and was struck side-on by a heavy tipper lorry coming the other way.

The impact caused “a significant intrusion” into the rear where Jayden and Kyle were sitting, before sending it careering down the side of the lorry next to a crash barrier, where it came to a halt. They died at the scene of multiple injuries.

Gray’s then girlfriend in the front passenger seat, was not seriously hurt but Gray himself suffered life-changing injuries.

An ambulance crew, on the way to hospital with another patient, found Gray not breathing and were able to save his life.

He was airlifted and spent nearly two months in hospital with a ruptured spleen, spine damage and a traumatic frontal lobe brain injury, which, he said, affects his life every day and has left him struggling to concentrate or control his emotions.

He told his counsel, Tony Graham KC, he remembered nothing of the accident or the journey leading up to it.

He said the first he knew about it was waking from an induced coma four weeks later, and learning he had been in a collision in his car with his girlfriend and two friends.

Two days later, his mother broke the news about Jayden and Kyle.

He told the court he was “broken” following the incident.

During the trial, jurors heard it was a matter of agreement that an analyst who studied data from the Corsa’s insurance company “black box” found Gray had been “the perfect driver” until the collision.

Two eyewitnesses said that Gray had been driving either “normally” or “not recklessly” about the same speed as other traffic before losing control, and a police expert who carried out a post-accident examination of the car said it was “unknown” whether or not there could have been a contributing mechanical fault.

The court heard that police vehicle examiners had not carried out some 20 checks on the wreck that might have shed light on what happened, and had not been equipped with a code reader to analyse the memory of the crashed vehicle’s on-board diagnostics system, which could have revealed if a braking defect was implicated.

The court also heard that the police had not tested the slipperiness, or coefficient of friction, of the road surface where the loss of control had been said to occur.

The A91 exit was said to be a long-known “greasy corner”. Another driver gave evidence of starting to slide there only a few hours earlier.

A police accident investigator said she found no physical evidence – skids or gouges – to show exactly where the Corsa lost control.

Gray, of Bannockburn, an apprentice electrician, had denied causing the deaths of Jordan and Kyle, both from St Ninians, Stirling, by careless driving.