Dunbar driver who caused death of three friends escapes road ban after second crash near same spot
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A driver who caused the deaths of three friends in a horror crash when he was a teenager has escaped a road ban after he admitted to crashing his car into a roundabout. Robbie Gemmell was just 16 when he jumped into the driver’s seat of pal Jenna Barbour’s Peugeot 206 and careered down a remote country lane in East Lothian in November 2013.
Gemmell lost control of the vehicle and ploughed head-on into a brick wall – resulting in the deaths of school pals Jenna, 18, Joshua Stewart, 16, and 15-year-old David Armstrong.
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Hide AdThe then teenager initially told police he had been a front seat passenger and Jenna had been driving when the car crashed near the hamlet of Tyninghame. But a police investigation proved Gemmell had been behind the wheel and the teenager eventually broke down and confessed his guilt as he lay in hospital recovering from his injuries.
Gemmell, now 25, has appeared back in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to plead guilty to an amended charge of careless driving. The court in Chambers Street heard he crashed his car into a roundabout just three miles from the place where his friends lost their lives in 2013. Sheriff Wendy Sheehan sentenced Gemmell, from Dunbar, to pay a fine of £640. She also placed eight penalty points on his licence during Wednesday’s hearing (December 14).
Gemmell pled guilty to driving a vehicle without due care and attention by driving at excessive speed, losing control of his vehicle and causing it to collide with a roundabout and overturn causing damage to his vehicle and injury to himself at Thistly Cross Roundabout, near Dunbar, on April 16 last year.
The Crown accepted a not guilty plea to Gemmell failing to comply with a breath test at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on the same date. In 2014, Gemmell was sentenced to a four year driving ban and ordered to carry out 300 hours unpaid work after he had pleaded guilty to a charge of causing the death of his three school friends by driving without due care and attention.