A teenager left her friend with horrific injuries after losing control of her car at high speed on a Tayside road as she pursued two married men with whom they had been having a secret tryst, a court was told.
Chloe Duncan was seen driving at 90mph before her car spun out of control and flipped several times in the air before coming to rest in a field near Meigle.
Jessica Rooney, 19, wept in court as she recalled the crash which left her with foot-long scars on her front and back as well as six metal screws and three plates in her back.
She told a trial at Perth Sheriff Court she and nursery worker Duncan had met up with ground worker Dale McBain, 26, and his friend in a park earlier in the evening.
When Mr McBain and his friend set off from Coupar Angus to return to Forfar in his white Audi, Miss Rooney said Duncan pursued them in her Ford Fiesta.
“She was trying to catch up with them,” Miss Rooney told the court.
“It was pitch black. Chloe’s speed was the cause of the crash. It was 90mph.
“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 and closer.
“I don’t know if Chloe knew there was a corner or she didn’t. She hit the brake and the car juddered and hit the kerb and went up in the air. We were screaming.
“The car was fully out of control. It went over the hedge and into the field and rolled in the field. It was turning and turning and turning. The car 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 knew I felt sore but I didn’t know how bad I was.
“It felt like my ribs were crushed. The two boys came back. He told me to get my story straight and to say he wasn’t with us.”
Mr McBain, who drove the girls to hospital, told the trial he did not want his partner – now his wife – to find out he had been secretly meeting an 18-year-old girl and her 17-year-old friend.
He admitted asking the teenagers to lie and said: “We shouldn’t have been with the girls at that time because we were in relationships and in marriage. We were both in relationships.”
Miss Rooney said she had fractured her spine in two places and suffered internal bleeding.
She spent time in intensive care before having operations to put plates in her back.
She said she lost three stone and became extremely ill after a bowel operation went wrong and had been left with two “massive scars” as a result of the incident.
Duncan, now 20, of Graham Place, Dundee, denied driving dangerously and at excessive speed and causing serious injury to her friend.
She was found guilty of the lesser charge of careless driving on the A94 Coupar Angus to Forfar road, near Meigle, on June 3 2018.
Sheriff William Wood said there was no corroboration of Duncan’s pre-crash speed but said he had “no reason to disbelieve” Miss Rooney’s version of events.
Solicitor John Boyle, defending, said Duncan now has a six-month-old baby and had been deeply affected by the consequences of the crash.
Sheriff Wood told Duncan: “You were approaching the village of Meigle and you car must have been doing some speed in order to have left the road as it did.
“You were both very lucky that night.”
He banned Duncan from driving for six months and fined her £600.
