Personal injury news

Three teenagers killed in tragic road traffic accident

An inquest has heard how a teenage driver with no licence hit a tree after losing control on a bend, killing himself and two young friends.

The hearing was told that 17-year-old Paul Kennedy had failed his driving test just a month before the road traffic accident on the A489 in Wales on September 10th 2005, and L plates were actually discovered in the foot well of his wrecked Fiesta.

Paul and a passenger, Lee Challoner, died instantly from multiple head injuries, and the other passenger, Daniel Lister, suffered a diffuse brain injury and died on the way to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. A post-mortem revealed that the driver had been drinking prior to the car crash, but was within the legal limit.

Witnesses reported that the boys' Ford Fiesta had been travelling too fast to navigate a particularly tricky bend and careered off the road, smashing through a fence and colliding with a tree.

Recording verdicts of accidental death on all three teenagers, coroner Geraint Williams said, "This man was inexperienced, driving too fast and had been drinking. There's no doubt that the three things together killed all three."

Summing up the road traffic accident inquest, Mr Williams warned, "I make it very plain that people who drink and drive and kill others are in jeopardy of criminal proceedings."