Young woman's harrowing warning to boyfriend ends in awful tragedy
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A woman who warned her boyfriend his ketamine addiction "caused murder all the time" was killed two days later - after he swerved off a motorway and ploughed into a tree whilst high on the drug. Kate Swale, 21, died after her partner Jamie Hughes lost control of his vehicle on the M62. Hughes was more than three times over the legal limit for ketamine and later told police he couldn't remember the horror collision because it "felt like a dream".
Liverpool Crown Court heard on Friday that Kate was sat in the front passenger seat of Hughes' grey Vauxhall Corsa when the car suddenly drifted to the left and collided with a silver Mercedes C180 shortly after midnight on May 27, 2023. Christopher Stables, prosecuting, said the driver of the latter vehicle, Thomas Parkinson, had been travelling from London to Liverpool at the time in order to catch a ferry to the Isle of Man. He said Hughes' car came "out of nowhere" and smashed into the offside of his vehicle before veering off the motorway, rolling and "disappearing into the bushes".
Mr Parkinson's front seat passenger Susan Salamah said the incident had "all happened in a few seconds", with the car having "hit a tree and bounced back onto the motorway". Emergency services raced to the scene in minutes as cops described Hughes' car as being "among the most heavily damaged" they had seen during their 14-year career.
On their arrival, the defendant was "shaking and unsteady on his feet, with blood on his hands and head" and "appeared to be in shock", with his breath smelling of alcohol and his eyes "reddened and glazed". He confirmed at the scene that he had used ketamine before driving as "a way of winding down after work and relaxing", adding: "It sort of rocked something, I swerved and blacked out. I felt like it was a dream.".
