A 17-year-old driver and two friends died in a fireball crash with a bus after he drove a Mercedes on the wrong side of the road, minutes after the group had been inhaling nitrous oxide, an inquest heard.
Jimmy Savory, who was already serving a driving ban, was at the wheel when the car collided head-on with an H25 double-decker near a railway bridge in west London shortly before midnight in March last year.
His passengers, Star Tomkins, 17, and Harley Woods, 18, also died. A fourth occupant, Faye Chownsmith, was the only survivor.
The Mercedes C180 Kompressor became wedged beneath the bus and both vehicles were engulfed by flames. Firefighters took nearly two hours to bring the blaze under control, while police struggled to free the trapped occupants.
Mercedes crash followed filming with nitrous oxide
The inquest at West London Coroner’s Court heard that the group had been smoking cannabis, drinking alcohol and filming themselves using nitrous oxide balloons while driving around Feltham.
Videos posted on social media that evening showed all four occupants consuming the gas while the car was travelling at twice the speed limit. Other footage showed Savory with a balloon in his mouth while driving.
Detective Constable Victor Barkes said Savory had driven on the wrong side of the road while traffic lights were red, and that the Mercedes had been travelling at speed through residential streets.
“It appears Jimmy was showing off to his friends that were inside the car,” he said. “It shows Jimmy had a lack of awareness of the effects nitrous oxide posed.”
He added: “Jimmy had a total disregard for other road users as well as the occupants of the car. It is very surprising that no other members of the public were killed.”
At about 11.55pm, the bus was approaching the railway bridge with one passenger on board. Savory was travelling in the opposite direction and had moved to the wrong side of the road to overtake two vehicles.
The bus driver saw the Mercedes appear “out of nowhere” and head towards him. Ms Chownsmith later said the last thing she remembered was seeing the bus’s headlights before the collision.
The driver escaped from his cab without serious injury, but the vehicles caught fire moments later. Officers pulled passengers from the Mercedes and tried to release Savory from the driver’s seat with a metal bar, but the car had been crushed and the flames were too severe.
One officer described the rescue as one of the most challenging incidents of his 27 years in policing. An air ambulance attended, but Savory, Tomkins and Woods were pronounced dead at the scene.
Savory had been disqualified after previously being caught driving without a licence or insurance. The Mercedes was also uninsured, and a large nitrous oxide canister was found in the passenger footwell.
The coroner heard that Savory could have faced a life sentence for causing death by dangerous driving had he survived. A post-mortem examination found that all three victims died from multiple traumatic injuries, while no toxicology report was disclosed in court.
Savory’s mother, Lisa Allen, said: “Jimmy made mistakes, but don’t we all make mistakes in life? He wasn’t perfect to everyone, but he was to me. And now I carry on in a dark cold world, longing for the day I see him again.”
Tomkins’s family said she had hoped to become a nail technician, adding that her equipment remained unused in her bedroom. “Instead of buying her first car, we had to buy a coffin and a headstone,” her mother and grandmother said.
Woods’s family said: “Losing him has left a pain we will never be able to put into words. Harley was only 18, he had so much life ahead of him. He didn’t deserve to die so young.”
Recording the deaths as the result of a road traffic collision, coroner Dr Anton Van Dellen said: “I don’t consider that any of the three deceased experienced any period of trauma or pain, I hope that is some very small comfort to the families.”
