British police believe a young couple who were thought to have been killed in a car accident were the victims of road rage. A witness has come forward to say he had seen the couple's car shunted off the road by the driver behind them.
Mr Toby Exley (22) and his girlfriend, Ms Karen Martin (20), were killed on October 6th when their car crossed the central reservation of a dual carriageway in west London and ploughed into an oncoming car.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said yesterday the police originally believed the accident did not involve a third car. However, late on Wednesday their investigation took an unexpected turn when a witness came forward, saying he had seen another driver ram the couple's car off the road and into the path of a car travelling towards the centre of London.
Scotland Yard said in a statement yesterday that the investigation into the couple's deaths was being treated as a very serious offence, and the inquiry was likely to be "protracted". If the suspected road-rage driver is found, he or she could face charges of manslaughter or death by dangerous driving.
At a press conference yesterday, their families described the couple as "lovely people" who might one day have married. They were buried beside each other earlier this week.
Mrs Kay Martin, Karen's mother, told the press conference: "There must be someone out there who knows who this maniac is. This man is likely to do this again and he needs to be stopped. If the driver drove that badly on this occasion, he must have driven like that before and also probably since then."
Crash investigators re-examining the scene believe Mr Exley and Ms Martin had just driven out of a 40 m.p.h. zone and had begun to accelerate into a 70 m.p.h. zone along the outside lane of the dual carriageway. They understand from the witness that a man or a woman driving behind the couple, who may have become impatient, bumped into their car at least three times, causing it to plunge through a wooden fence and into the oncoming traffic.
The driver who crashed into the couple escaped the accident with a broken arm and broken teeth. He is understood to be suffering from shock.
Mr Exley's brother, Robin (19), yesterday appealed for more information on the driver, who, he said, had "stolen" Toby from their family. "The person who did this should be stopped and they should think about our family and Karen's family. Anyone out there could be victims of this person."
Police said they are searching the wreckage of Mr Exley's car for his filofax. Members of his family believe he might have written down the registration number of the car which rammed his, although the police admitted there was little hope anything written on a piece of paper would still be legible after the crash.
"Road rage", when motorists act violently because of acts of other drivers, has crossed the Atlantic with a vengeance. However, the most notorious suspected case in Britain, the stabbing of Lee Harvey in December 1996, was found not be an incident of road rage when his girlfriend, Tracie Andrews, was found guilty of his murder last July.