Scottish police plead guilty over death of young woman left in car wreckage for 3 days

7 September 2021, 10:15 | Updated: 7 September 2021, 10:32

Police Scotland has admitted its failings "materially contributed" to the death of a young mother who lay undiscovered in a crashed car with her partner for three days after the incident was reported to them.

The force pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday to health and safety failings following the deaths of John Yuill, 28, and Lamara Bell, 25, after their car crashed off the M9 near Stirling in July 2015.

Despite a call being made to police, it took them three days to respond.

When officers finally arrived at the scene, Mr Yuill was dead and Ms Bell died four days later in hospital.

At the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday, the office of the Chief Constable of Police Scotland admitted that it failed to ensure that people including Mr Yuill and Ms Bell were not exposed to risks to their health and safety by failing to provide an "adequate and reliable call-handling system" between April 1, 2013 and March 1, 2016.

It also failed to ensure the system was "not vulnerable to unacceptable risks arising from human error" and to ensure that all relevant information reported by members of the public was recorded on a Police Scotland IT system so that it could be considered and a police response provided where appropriate.

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The force admitted that as a result, members of the public were exposed to risks to their health and safety and, in particular on July 5, 2015, a police officer at the force call-handling centre at Bilston Glen Service Centre failed to record a phone call from a member of the public reporting that a vehicle was at the bottom of an embankment at the side of the eastbound junction nine slip road from the M80 on to the M9.

The indictment says the phone call was not recorded on any Police Scotland IT system and the failure went unnoticed with "no proper consideration of the report and no opportunity for an appropriate response from Police Scotland".

The force admitted Ms Bell and Mr Yuill remained "unaided and exposed to the elements" in the car between July 5 and 8, 2015 and that the failings "materially contributed" to her death on July 12 that year at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

The force pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Sir Stephen House, who was chief constable at the time of the incident, stepped down from the role at the end of 2015 following controversy over the deaths.