A triple death crash trial was dramatically interrupted by a distraught widow shouting at the man accused of killing her husband.
Andrew Houston is on trial at Inverness Sheriff Court accused of causing the deaths of his wife and daughter and a German doctor by driving carelessly on the A9 in 2013.
Yesterday, as the jury heard listened to a speech from the 48-year-old’s counsel, Ursula Hayajneh leapt to her feet weeping as Frances McMenamin QC tried to persuade the jurors to acquit her client.
The 48-year-old solicitor advocate, from Wardie Avenue, Edinburgh, was himself injured in the crash near Newtonmore that killed his 42 year old wife, Abigail, seven year old daughter Mia and Dr Mohammad Hayajneh.
Miss McMenamin was ending her near hour long submission and had asked the jury to also consider finding her client guilty of simply driving carelessly on July 9, 2013 at Ralia, by crossing the central white lines, but not causing the deaths.
She said: “My client was doing the right thing trying to get back on to his side of the road as any careful and considerate driver would do and had swerved left.
” I am not blaming Mrs Hayajneh. However she candidly admitted in her evidence that she was driving a car and a half length away from the Peugeot 206 in front which suddenly drove off the road.
“In her left hand drive Jeep Cherokee, it was only then that she saw my client’s Audi. She couldn’t go left because she had no time and would have hit the Peugeot so she had to go right and there was the head-on collision.
“You could convict only on careless driving and delete the part of the charge that he caused the deaths.”
Then Mrs Hayajneh leapt to her feet and cried angrily towards Houston and Miss McMenamin: “He has killed three people. They have no future and he is Mr Clean?”
Before Sheriff David Sutherland ordered her to be quiet, her son Jonas who accompanied her throughout the trial, got her to sit down and she apologised to the court.
The QC’s forensic collision expert Mark Littler said that a dislodged coil spring on the suspension was “a possible explanation” for Houston’s Audi to cross white lines into the opposite lane if it had happened shortly before the accident.
But the 55 year old former Greater Manchester policeman accepted that it was “an implausible explanation.”
He added that the more likely cause of the displaced coil spring in the rear near side of the German made vehicle which had just passed its MOT was the collision.
Houston’s 10 year old daughter Lily was badly injured but survived.