The boyfriend of a woman who was killed by a drink driver begged him to stop the car as it raced at over 90mph, her inquest has heard.
Kitchen designer Lillie Clack, 22, from Morden, London, was fatally injured and died days after the crash, in the early hours of Christmas Day in 2021.
On Thursday, the inquest into the death heard that drink driver Charlie Hilton, 25, was chased by police before his Mercedes hit a tree, flipped over and burst into flames.
He was carrying five passengers at the time after offering them a lift home following their night out to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park.
Residents in Beeches Avenue, Carshalton, south London, grabbed fire extinguishers and rushed to help those involved in the crash. The passengers were pulled from the car but Ms Clack suffered a brain bleed and died in hospital three days later.
Ms Clack’s boyfriend Jack Watson, who implored with Hilton to let himself and his partner out of the vehicle, and best friend Delia Casey were among those who were badly hurt.
The car was overcrowded with six people squeezed inside, with not everyone wearing seatbelts, South London Coroner’s Court sitting at Croydon Town Hall heard.
The friends had been enjoying a night out at Winter Wonderland in the West End and visited a pub in Morden before accepting a lift home from Hilton.
In a statement Mr Watson, who was wearing a seatbelt, said he was ‘shocked and I remember thinking why is he going so fast’ when the car sped away so quickly.
Mr Watson, who was in the back seat, later recalled: ‘I think I might have said “Charlie what are you doing, why are you going so fast”. I think the girls were in shock.’
He remembered seeing police blue lights and sirens and described Hilton’s driving as ‘dangerous and quick’.
During the journey, he said: ‘I thought Charlie could easily lose control. I did not want to be in the car. I felt scared because I had been in a crash before on my bike.’
Mr Watson said ‘it felt too fast’ and he wanted to get out saying ‘it just felt unsafe’.
He remembered saying ‘Charlie, slow down. What are you doing? Let me and Lillie out.’
He recalled Hilton telling him to shut up.
Mr Watson cannot recall all the details of the chase, the inquest heard, but he remembered Hilton running a red light at some point before the crash. Hilton did an illegal U-turn and was undertaking and overtaking vehicles.
Mr Watson added: ‘I do not remember hitting a tree. The only memory I have is being pulled out on a stretcher and bleeding from my lip.’
He added: ‘I remember asking “where’s Lillie?”. I remember being in an ambulance and blood on my jacket but I do not know where the blood came from.
‘My clothing was cut off from me – and I knew then that it was bad.’
The passengers have gaps in their recall of the crash but remember feeling ‘shocked’ as the car raced away, continuing to build speed, it was said.
Hilton was told by his passengers a police vehicle had turned its blue lights on behind them and was indicating for him to stop. Instead, he sped up and was driving so fast that the passengers bumped their head on the roof of the car as they were chased by police, the inquest heard.
In a statement, Ms Casey, who was sitting on the front seat, said: ‘Everyone was shouting inside the car. There was a lot going on and I was just feeling very fearful for everyone in the car. The speed we were going at made me feel terrified.
‘It feels like I was only in there for a few seconds. It feels like a blur.
‘Even after I visited Lillie’s tree I still have no memory of the accident.’
Ms Casey said she ‘was not my usual self’ but was not drunk when she got into the car and was not wearing a seatbelt.
She added that ‘at no point did Charlie appear drunk to me. He did not seem to be drunk as he was not talking loud and he was not stumbling.’
Ms Casey was among a group of friends who had been to the pub and had accepted a lift from Hilton to drop them off at her home a few minutes away.
Her boyfriend had won a 6ft inflatable banana at Winter Wonderland earlier that day which blocked the view of the friends of who got in to the back seat.
Nadia Avent, who was in an taxi when she saw the car explode in the early hours, said: ‘The car overtook [the] taxi at great speed. It looked like a video game because of the speed he went past us.’
She added that she saw ‘the car exploding in front of us’ and then dialled 999 to inform the emergency services.
Sergeant Alexander Gill said that his police car was doing 90mph in a 40mph zone during the chase and Hilton’s Mercedes was ‘greatly getting away’.
He did not have a record of Hilton’s speed but accepted an observation from the assistant coroner for London South, Sebastian Naughton, that ‘when you are driving at 100mph and you think he was going upwards of 100mph?’
The car was travelling between 70mph and 80mph in the seconds before the crash, the inquest was told.
PC Mathew Reed, who examined the scene after the crash, said the car had gone over a raised zebra crossing just seconds before the collision.
This made the vehicle become ‘unstable’ and ‘speed is a contributory factor’ in how the driver would have handled the vehicle.
He could not say how significant not wearing a seatbelt could have been as a cause of Ms Clack’s death.
He said ‘seatbelts do save lives’ and noted that ‘passengers not being restrained’ would have moved around in the car when it hit the tree.
In February 2023, Hilton was jailed at the Old Bailey for 10 years and six months after pleading guilty to causing Ms Clack’s death by dangerous driving, three counts of causing serious injury, failing to stop when directed and driving above the alcohol limit.
He was also disqualified from driving for five years after his release from prison.
Ms Clack’s mother has spent years campaigning for Lillie’s Law, which would see all drunk drivers who kill have their licences revoked permanently.
A petition set up by the family has gained more than 40,000 signatures.
The inquest continues.
