Drugged up and speeding: Bloxwich teen locked up for killing friend the first time he drove
A teenager who killed a close friend in a crash the first time he drove a car on public roads is starting three years four months behind bars today.
Morgan Chaplin – aged 17 at the time but now 18 – was high on drugs and travelling at more than twice the speed limit on damp roads when disaster struck, a judge heard.
He lost control of the Suzuki Swift in Lichfield Road, Pelsall after ignoring a warning to slow down from passengers on February 11, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told. The Suzuki – that had no rear seats and was travelling at an estimated 63mph in a 30 zone – careered onto the opposite side of the road where the impact with the kerb sent it hurtling back into a garden wall, said Miss Sharonjit Bahia, prosecuting.
Front seat passenger Ryan Coney, 22, who apparently owned the unregistered vehicle and was not wearing his seat belt, suffered catastrophic chest injuries and was certified dead at the scene. One of the passengers was also badly hurt but declined to co-operate with the police, it was said.
Chaplin defied a broken ankle to leave his fatally injured friend in the wreckage and flee to a pub half a mile away where he raised the alarm. Miss Bahia revealed: “He had never driven on a road before.”
The defendant had neither insurance nor a relevant driving licence. Tests revealed he had been smoking cannabis and had taken cocaine before the crash. The four friends had been to ‘chill out’ at Chasewater Reservoir but Chaplin was spooked by a car that followed them on the journey home, flashing its lights.
Chaplin from Abbot Street, Bloxwich pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, being under the influence of drugs, failing to stop after an accident and having neither insurance nor a licence.
He was ordered to be detained at a Young Offenders Institution and banned from driving for six years eight months by Judge James Burbidge QC who told him: “You had never had a driving lesson, were unfit through drugs and going at excessive speed after being told to slow down for the bend.”
Ryan’s mother Viv said: “We will never get over this. The day he died a part of me died too.”
