The tragic deaths of a couple who lay undiscovered following a horror crash on the M9 are to be probed on the orders of the Lord Advocate.
Lamara Bell, 25, and John Yuill, 28, died after their car left the motorway near Stirling and careered down an embankment. Despite a call to Police Scotland, it took three days for the force to respond to the accident in July, 2015.
When officers finally arrived at the scene, they found Yuill dead while Bell passed away four days later in hospital. The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC has now ordered a fatal accident inquiry be held into the deaths at Stirling Sheriff Court - more than seven years after the crash.
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Scotland's most senior prosecutor has ruled it is in the 'public interest' for a probe to take place because the circumstances of their deaths raises 'serious concern'. A preliminary hearing has been fixed for December 16 this year.
No date has been announced for the full inquiry to get underway. The couple were returning to Falkirk from a camping trip when Yuill's Renault Clio came off the motorway and crashed down an embankment into trees.
It is believed he died instantly in the accident but mum-of-two Bell lay critically injured in the wreck for three days. Her children, aged just five and ten at the time of the crash, and her family were awarded £1m in compensation over the tragedy.
Last year Police Scotland were fined £100,000 after they pled guilty to health and safety failings over the incident at the High Court in Edinburgh. The office of the Chief Constable of Police Scotland admitted that it failed to ensure that people, including both victims, were not exposed to risks to their health and safety by failing to provide an 'adequate and reliable call-handling system' between April 2013 and March 2016.
It also failed to ensure the system was 'not vulnerable to unacceptable risks arising from human error' and that an officer failed to record a phone call stating that a vehicle was at the bottom of an embankment. A notice announcing the fatal accident inquiry said: "An inquiry into the death of John Alexander Yuill and Lamara Natalie Bell is to be held.
"The inquiry is a discretionary inquiry under section 4 of the Inquiries into Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc. (Scotland) Act 2016. The Lord Advocate considers that the deaths fall within section 4(1)(a)(ii) of the Act as they occurred in circumstances giving rise to serious public concern, and that in terms of section 4(1)(b) of the Act has decided that it is in the public interest for the Inquiry to be held into the circumstances of the deaths."
