Car '˜was overtaking three abreast at 70mph before fatal Doncaster crash'

Sheffield Crown Court heard how a black Renault Megane was overtaking a Volkswagen Passat, which was already overtaking a car towing a caravan in a 30mph zone seconds before the fatal crash, in Branton, near Doncaster.

Prosecutor Michael Slater told a jury how the Megane clipped the kerb on the wrong side of Doncaster Road, losing a back wheel, before demolishing bollards on a central reservation and ending up on its roof in flames in the front garden of a house.

Mr Slater explained how Liam Aldred, 26, and Dean McIntyre, 27, died in the crash.

Another man, Bradley Stevenson, managed to get out of the car, despite being on fire, but was seriously injured and was treated at the roadside.

The prosecutor said two people fled the scene - a 15-year-old boy and James Maughan, 21, who went on trial on Tuesday.

Mr Slater said the prosecution case was that Maughan was driving the Megane when it crashed on August 25 last year.

But he told the jury of four men and eight women that the defendant denies being at the wheel.

Describing the crash, Mr Slater told the jury: “It (the Megane) overtook at high speed a Volkswagen Passat travelling in the same direction along Doncaster Road.

“The Passat was already in the process of overtaking a car with a caravan travelling in the same direction.”

He said any oncoming cars would have seen the three cars “side by side”.

The prosecutor said the Megane and the Volkswagen came into contact with each other, snapping off their door mirrors, before the Megane clipped the kerb and its wheel bounced off into a garden after hitting a tree.

Mr Slater said: “It (the Megane) demolished two bollards before it diagonally veered into the offside lane and into a small garden where it ended up on its roof, ablaze.”

He said an estimate of the speed of the car just before the crash, made from CCTV footage, was 70mph.

He explained how Maughan ended up in Swansea on the day of the crash, where he checked himself into hospital with serious burns under a false name, saying he was injured at a family barbecue.

The prosecutor asked the jury to consider why Maughan and the teenager left the scene.

He said: “Why should they flee the scene in circumstances of this nature if neither had been the driver of the car?”

He added: “The reason Mr Maughan was fleeing the scene was the very fact that he had been the driver and didn’t want to be apprehended.”

Mr Slater said to the jury: “Why flee to Swansea in the first place and why, when he got there, did he book in in a false name, and why tell them some cock-and-bull story about how your injuries had been caused?”

He said Maughan was in hospital in Wales and then Sheffield for three weeks.

Maughan, of Marshland Road, Doncaster, denies two counts of causing death by dangerous driving. He also denies a further charge of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

The trial continues.