A speeding teenager who caused the death of three fellow sixth formers and left three others seriously injured in a car crash just weeks after passing his test has been sentenced to a two-year detention in a young offenders’ institution.
Edward Spencer was sentenced exactly two years and a week after his Ford Fiesta collided with an oncoming Fiat at 64mph, killing his passengers Matilda Seccombe, known as Tilly, 16, Harry Purcell, a 17-year-old twin, and Frank Wormald, 16.
Spencer, the 19-year-old son of a farmer, previously admitted three counts of causing death by careless driving.
Today, at Warwick Crown Court, Spencer was handed a 24-month sentence to be spent in a young offenders’ institution. He was also given an eight-year driving ban and ordered to take an extended driving test when he applies for his licence back.
Spencer, who had been noticeably red in the face throughout the hearing, stood staring at the judge as the sentence was delivered.
During his sentencing remarks, Judge Andrew Lockhart KC said the ‘horrific facts of this case might have been avoided’ if newly qualified drivers were ‘prohibited from carrying passengers for a period of time after passing their driving test’.
The judge described the victims as ‘exemplars’ and said Spencer had demonstrated a ‘cavalier attitude to road safety’.
The judge added that while the speed limit was 60mph on the road, driving at a safe speed would be a ‘long way’ from that.
He said it was ‘an act of pure folly to drive at a speed even close to 60mph (the limit). This was a road you knew and you knew the hazards on it but that knowledge did not cause you to slow down’.
Spencer had passed his driving test just six weeks before the collision on the B4035 between Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, and Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, but had already garnered a reputation among his peers for dangerous driving.
Spencer and the three killed were all sixth form students at Chipping Campden School, an Ofsted-rated ‘outstanding’ former grammar which was founded almost 600 years ago.
Frank was only in the car because he was going home with Harry to watch a football match on TV, sources revealed to .
Outside court, the driver of the second vehicle, a woman who was driving her two stepchildren, told how she urged the children to close their eyes as she realised Spencer’s out-of-control Ford Fiesta was going to collide with them.
She told : ‘The only thing I could do – because I knew in that moment that my children were going to die – the only thing I could do to help them was to tell them to close their eyes’.
The stepmother, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of the children who survived the crash, said she was knocked unconscious and came around to find the children, aged ten and 12 at the time, screaming in the back seat.
All three were hospitalised after the collision at Stretton-on-Fosse, Warwickshire, which saw four air ambulances attend the scene.
The court heard the young boy in the Fiat dragged his sister from the wreckage, not knowing if he was pulling her out alive or dead.
Spencer, who as 17 at the time of the crash. admitted three counts of causing serious injury by careless driving in relation to those victims.
The stepmother joined Harry and Tilly’s mothers in condemning ‘cocky’ Spencer – who only pleaded guilty to the offences on what was due to be the first day of his trial last month – for his failure to take responsibility sooner and a lack of remorse, both of which had deepened their agony.
And they urged the Government to do more to reduce the number of serious and fatal collisions involving young drivers.
Prosecutor Timothy Harrington said Spencer had a ‘history of bad driving, of showing off, taking risks, driving too quickly and failing to heed the warnings of those in the car with him.’
Trainee joiner Spencer told police he had no recollection of the crash but said he wouldn’t have been speeding because he was a ‘responsible driver’. Mr Harrington said: ‘The Crown say that is untrue.’
The court heard Spencer ‘violently swerved’ across the road, with his passengers taking the brunt of the impact.
Mr Harrington said Frank was sitting in the front seat of Spencer’s car, with Harry and Tilly in the rear seats. All three suffered traumatic head injuries.
Mr Harrington said the Fiesta collided with the oncoming Fiat after Spencer’s car left the road and hit the verge before ‘spinning out of control’.
The prosecutor added: ‘He then took his foot off the accelerator, which caused the car to understeer and he lost control. The car then went into the opposite carriageway. ‘
An expert estimated Spencer was travelling at 64mph at the time on the road, which has a 60mph limit.
Mr Harrington added: ‘Whatever the speed, he was travelling too quickly for his driving capability and the road.’
The judge later pointed out that the road also had a sign warning of a sharp bend, chevrons on the road and the word ‘slow’ painted on the surface, but said Spencer had ’caused carnage’.
Mr Harrington said evidence gleaned from social media accounts of some of those involved or friendly with those involved in the collision showed that Spencer was a ‘habitually bad driver’.
Video clips – including one found backed up in a cloud server from Harry Purcell’s social media ‘clearly demonstrated’ this, the court heard.
The prosecutor said clips uncovered heard one of Spencer driving – with Harry in the passenger seat – with one hand on the wheel and loud music blaring.
Other similar clips showed him driving badly while on his own in the car, the court heard. In one clip he bragged about reversing so fast that he was ‘going to crash’, while another showed him driving past two men on mobility scooters at 50mph.
Mr Harrington said another clip showed Spencer with four passengers in the car, including Harry in the middle rear seat. One of the occupants is heard to say: ‘You can drive nicely when you pass and then you drive like a d*******’.
Parents of the dead read out victim impact statements in court in which they described being left ‘broken’ and ‘utterly devastated’ by the loss of their children. All condemned Spencer for his lack of remorse.
David Wormald, Frank’s father, said that each morning his family wake with the ‘sickening realisation that Frank is dead.’
He said his youngest son’s purpose was to make his parents and older brother laugh, and they were now left in ‘despair’ at Frank’s loss. ‘It had changed all of their lives in every conceivable way’, he added.
Toni Purcell, the mother of Harry, said the day of the crash was ‘etched in my mind forever’. She said she suffers ‘waves of panic’ at the thought of never being able to see her ‘funny’ son again.
She sobbed at the memory of being told by the hospital doctors that ‘they had done what they could but that Harry was not going to survive’.
She added: ‘They told us we could go in to see him but that we needed to be aware that Harry didn’t look like he did before the crash. What a choice…the decision will haunt us forever.’
Mrs Purcell said she had seen a number of the video clips showing Spencer’s poor driving and said: ‘There is not one in my opinion showing him driving in a safe manner. That makes me sick.’
Juliet Seccombe, Tilly’s mother, recalled her ‘bright’ and hard-working daughter’s ‘sense of humour, human kindness and loyalty.’
She said Tilly had a passion for food and cooking and wanted to go to catering college with a view to cooking on yachts and ‘seeing the world’.
Mrs Seccombe,53, recalled how her ‘mother’s intuition’ was on ‘high alert’ when her daughter failed to return home from school that afternoon. ‘I got in my car and drove’, she said.
‘The shock and fear I saw when I came across the ambulances was enormous.’
Mrs Seccombe was informed her daughter had been taken to hospital and they later discovered Tilly had suffered 70 per cent brain damage.
She said: ‘They said there was nothing they could do and my life fell apart in that moment’.
She said the family initially thought the collision had been a ‘terrible accident’
A court heard that in the lead-up to the crash, Spencer’s car had been caught on CCTV ‘plainly speeding’ at an estimated 57mph on a 40mph stretch around three-and-a-half miles along the road.
The families of the victims then uncovered evidence of Spencer’s sub-standard driving on social media – and also of his apparent lack of remorse.
Mrs Seccombe, who runs her own soft furnishings business, told how she managed to gain access to her daughter’s Snapchat account while looking for photographs, which led her to begin questioning the manner of Spencer’s driving.
She added: ‘Eventually, my friend told me Ed was posting without remorse or empathy towards the families of the victims on social media.
‘Things like: ‘I’m back!’ and ‘It was not my fault – I’m a careful driver’.
She continued: ‘We have since learned that Tilly had messaged him to challenge him about his dangerous driving, to which his reply was: ‘You underestimate me.’
Mrs Seccombe said his reply was ‘a clear reflection of his ego and something I will not be able to unsee.’ She added: ‘It will haunt me until the day I die.’
She accused Spencer of being ‘arrogant’ and said she found it ‘astonishing’ and ‘callous’ that Spencer took a job at a timber yard just a ‘few hundred yards’ from the family’s home, a decision which has now left her anxious when coming and going from home.
The driver of the other vehicle in the collision told how she had been left with a huge feeling of guilt at surviving the crash, massive and ongoing mental and physical health issues and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
She stood shaking in court to deliver her statement as Spencer, in a navy suit and tie, sat with his head bowed. She said she is plagued by visions of the children in the back of her car, ‘motionless and covered in blood.’
The woman said Spencer’s behaviour ahead of a previous court hearing – when she said she saw him smirking and dancing to music on his headphones – made Spencer ‘incompatible to any feelings of guilt’.
Daniel White, defending, said his client was remorseful and read from a letter Spencer had submitted to the judge in which he said he ‘never intended this to happen’.
Spencer added in the note: ‘Every day I live with it’ and ‘not a day goes by that i don’t think about the impact.’
Spencer had no previous convictions and was described by his family as ‘naive’, the court heard.
The court heard there was medical evidence supporting his account that he had no recollection of the incident.
The judge described Spencer as a ‘habitual bad driver, fascinated by speed’, and said there was a ‘terrible inevitability’ to the crash.
He added: ‘This was a collision fuelled by an irresponsible and inexperienced driver who had been warned in the weeks before.’
has previously told how Spencer, from Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire, had promised Tilly’s father, James, a Parish councillor in their neighbouring village of Preston on Stour, that he would be ‘careful’ behind the wheel.
Tilly had also raised concerns about the manner of his driving just hours before the fatal collision, her father revealed.
She had only been travelling to and from school with Spencer for around a week before he lost control of his Ford Fiesta on a bend.
Spencer voluntarily gave up his driving licence following the crash, but successfully reapplied to the DVLA for it last year. He is now said to be working at a sawmill on the edge of Preston on Stour, where Tilly’s family still live.
Mr Seccombe, 55, said it was ‘sickening’ to think that Spencer had possibly been driving himself to work at a timber yard which was ‘virtually within sight of Tilly’s bedroom window’.
They families of two of the victims – together with the driver of the other car – are now calling for the introduction of graduated driving licences.
These could include restrictions such as a ban on new drivers carrying younger passengers, a late-night driving curfew for the first few months after passing a driving test, or other measures such as a minimum learning period.
According to statistics from the Department for Transport, in 2023 around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver, defined as someone between the ages of 17 to 24.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are four times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
Detective Chief Superintendent Anna Middleton, of Warwickshire Police, said Spencer had been driving too fast for the conditions.
She added: ‘He was an inexperienced driver and undoubtedly his inexperience had an impact on what happened that day. He took the bend too quickly and as a result of the collision three young people lost their lives.
‘My understanding is he has not shown any remorse or apologised throughout the investigation.’
She added: ‘This is one of the most harrowing incidents we have dealt with in a long time. From emergency services who responded, all the way through to the investigation team, this has been a really difficult incident for them to deal with.
‘A lot of them have children of their own and of a similar age to those affected….undoubtedly they will be affected by this for a long period of time.’
‘Unfortunately incidents like this are not unique and if there’s one message I would like to get across to young drivers it is to note what has happened here: lives torn apart by the actions of an inexperienced driver.
‘Ultimately this was an entirely avoidable and preventable incident, so if there’s one outcome I would like to see come out of this, I would hope young drivers will consider their behaviours behind the wheel.’
Philip Seccombe, the Warwickshire Police and Crime Commissioner, whose second cousin, James, is Tilly’s father, is campaigning for GDLs to be introduced.
Mr Seccombe, the joint lead on roads policing for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said graduated licences would ‘protect, rather than penalise’ young drivers and had worked well in other countries such as Canada and .
He said: ‘Sadly we lose too many young drivers to road collisions and I will be working with organisations such as Forget Me Not Families, the AA, RAC and others to build a case to take to the Department for Transport.’
He said that while Tilly’s parents had suffered a ‘devastating’ loss, they ‘do not want this to happen to anyone else.’
Two months before the collision caused by Spencer, a lorry driver died in a collision with a school bus heading to Chipping Campden School on the same stretch of the B4035 between the north Cotswolds town and Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.