Sports car crash claims 4
2008-07-13 23:58
Johannesburg - A 22-year-old man died in a car accident on Sunday in an Italian sports car worth millions of rands.
The accident took place at about 04:50 on Witkoppen Road, north of Johannesburg.
Three other people also died in the accident.
It is believed that Brett Scott lost control of a Lamborghini Diablo Roadster when he went around a bend, presumably at high speed, and crashed into another car and burnt to death in the car wreck.
His parents Terry and Leslie Scott visited the scene of the accident on Sunday morning.
Spokesperson of the Johannesburg metro police, Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar, said Brett, of Boskruin, near Fourways in northern Johannesburg, lost control of the vehicle at the corner of Riverbend Road.
"The Lamborghini landed on the other side of the road where it collided with a black Volkswagen Golf belonging to Top Security.
The vehicles caught alight and both drivers burned to death in their cars," Minnaar said.
Albert Ncube, 42, was driving the Golf. His two passengers, a man and a woman whose names were not yet known, also died.
Spokesperson for Netcare911 Nick Dollman said that there had been a massive impact.
"The front wheel of the Golf was on the same level as the door handle and the car was more or less halved in size."
'So much life'
A spokesperson for the Scotts, Jean Bedou, said the family was very traumatised.
"Brett was loved by his friends and had so much life ahead of him. His family is completely stunned."
Brett was a financial advisor at a company in Cresta in Johannesburg.
Gary Ronald, spokesperson of the Automobile Association (AA), said that training played an important role when driving a super-powerful sports car like a Lamborghini.
"It's just stupid getting into a Lamborghini if you're not trained.
"You have to know how to handle the power that's available to you and how the vehicle will react in different situations."
Leo Kok, editor of MotorBeeld, said the Diablo was not manufactured anymore but was still comparable with Lamborghini's latest models.
He added that the Diablo had a reputation as a "sometimes unpredictable" model.
It was not known which year's Brett's Diablo was but Kok estimated that the vehicle was more or less worth between R2.5m and R3.5m.
An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that Scott had been given the vehicle by his parents as a gift and that they had identified his burnt body at the scene.