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A former police officer drove his car through the window of his ex partner’s funeral business in a bid to kill her and her mum.
Shocking CCTV footage shows drunk William McBurnie’s vehicle smash through the shop front as Zoe Turnbull, 46, and Beverley Turnbull, 71, narrowly escape being killed.
The women, however, have been left with injuries, including, in Miss Turnbull’s case, hearing loss and PTSD.
At the High Court in Livingston today, McBurnie pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder.
Judge Lord Mulholland described the attack – in the Scottish Borders town of Jedburgh in December 2022 – as a ‘cowardly and selfish act’.
He told the 57-year-old to be under no illusion that he was going to be sent to prison for ‘a very long time’.
The court heard that McBurnie, a former advanced driver and driving instructor with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, had been drinking whisky since 6am on the day of the crash.
William McBurnie pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder (Picture: Digby Brown)
He was nearly three times the drink drive limit when he deliberately accelerated along an adjoining street and drove ‘at speed’ through a give way sign towards the shop in Market Street.
His car mounted the pavement, smashed through two large flower planters and through the plate glass window, sending glass flying everywhere and hitting the office desk so hard it was impaled in a rear wall.
The video footage shows just how close McBurnie came to hitting both women as they desperately pressed themselves against the side walls of the office.
McBurnie’s car smashes through the shop front
As he climbed out of the wreckage the two women were seen in the background hugging each other outside the shop.
McBurnie had been seen stopping his car at the junction opposite the shop on two occasions the previous week, the court heard.
On the day of the attack he was again seen pausing at the junction before turning to the right and driving off after a customer left the undertakers.
Zoe Turnbull, who has been left with hearing loss and PTSD (Picture: Digby Brown)
Moments later, after driving round a triangle of roads in Jedburgh town centre, Miss Turnbull spotted McBurnie’s car speeding straight towards the glass-fronted office.
She shouted to her mother, who was standing behind a frosted glass panel of the front window: ‘He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming through the window!’
She pinned herself against the side wall of the room as the accused’s car crashed through, narrowly missing the two of them, the court heard.
Just before McBurnie’s car smashes through the window
McBurnie who suffered a burn injury to his wrist as the car’s airbags went off, immediately said: ‘Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
Advocate depute Alex Price Marmion said Miss Turnbull, 46, suffered a bruised leg and had since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident, the
She also now had tinnitus, deafness in her …read more
Source:: Metro
