Drug-drive mother guilty of deaths

12 April 2012

A mother has been found guilty of killing her two young daughters and a pair of teenagers in a head-on car crash while high on drugs.

Davina Smith, 31, was using a Ford Fiesta she had stolen to take one of her children to the doctor when she suddenly "swerved" on to the other side of the road and ploughed into a Vauxhall Corsa.

The tragedy not only claimed the lives of Karis, eight, and Kalli, four, but caused the deaths of aspiring model Kezia Adger and motorbike enthusiast Lee Gray - both 16 - who were also travelling with her.

All four, none of whom were wearing seatbelts, died from multiple injuries. Three were thrown from the car by the force of the impact.

London's Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Smith from Tilbury, Essex, who suffers from a heart condition, was also seriously injured.

When well enough to be questioned, she initially pretended that one of the teenagers had been at the wheel. Although she later accepted she had been driving she did not give evidence.

Instead, she claimed through counsel the Crown had neither proved the drugs had impaired her driving nor managed to discount the possibility a distraction had caused her to swerve.

But the jury of five men and seven women, which had been warned to put any sympathy they might feel for her to one side, took just over two hours to convict her of four counts of causing death by careless driving "while unfit through drugs" on January 31 this year.

She showed no reaction as the unanimous verdicts were announced in a court packed with relatives and friends of the dead teenagers, who also lived in Tilbury.

Remanding her in custody until February 2, Judge David Radford said he needed the benefit of a pre-sentence report before passing sentence. However, he warned her she should expect nothing other than a "substantial" term of imprisonment.

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