A DUNBAR man who caused the death of three friends in a horror crash when he was a teenager has escaped a road ban after he admitted crashing his car into a roundabout.

Robbie Gemmell was just 16 when he jumped into the driver’s seat of friend Jenna Barbour’s Peugeot 206 and careered down a remote country lane near Tyninghame in November 2013.

Gemmell lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a brick wall, resulting in the deaths of school friends Jenna, 18, Joshua Stewart, 16, and 15-year-old David Armstrong.

Gemmell initially told police that he had been a front seat passenger and Jenna had been driving when the car crashed.

But a police investigation proved that Gemmell had been behind the wheel and the teenager eventually broke down and confessed his guilt as he lay in hospital recovering from his injuries.

Gemmell, now 25, has appeared back in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to plead guilty to an amended charge of careless driving when he crashed his car into a roundabout just three miles from where his friends lost their lives nine years ago.

Sheriff Wendy Sheehan sentenced Gemmell, of Boroughdales, Dunbar, to pay a fine of £640 and placed eight penalty points on his licence during Wednesday’s hearing.

Gemmell pleaded guilty to driving a vehicle without due care and attention by driving at excessive speed, losing control of his vehicle and causing it to collide with a roundabout and overturn, causing damage to his vehicle and injury to himself, at Thistly Cross Roundabout, near Dunbar, on April 16 last year.

The Crown accepted a not guilty plea from Gemmell of failing to comply with a breath test at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on the same date.

In 2014, Gemmell was sentenced to a four-year driving ban and ordered to carry out 300 hours unpaid work after he pleaded guilty to a charge of causing the death of his three school friends by driving without due care and attention.