Met Police reopen school crash probe after girls’ deaths in Wimbledon
Two eight-year-old girls died when a Land Rover Defender hit a Wimbledon school tea party. Police later reopened the case, and Claire Freemantle was charged after fresh evidence.
The crash outside The Study Preparatory School in Wimbledon turned an end-of-term tea party into one of the most painful child-safety cases in recent memory. Claire Freemantle was driving the Land Rover Defender that smashed through a fence and into the school grounds on 6 July 2023, killing eight-year-olds Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau and injuring several others, including Nuria’s mother, Smera Chohan.
The collision happened on the last day of the summer term, when children and families were gathered at the school in south-west London. Seven other people were hurt, among them two other adults, two eight-year-old girls, a seven-year-old girl and a seven-month-old baby, underscoring how quickly a vehicle incident outside a school can become a mass-casualty event.
Freemantle was first arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, but in June 2024 the Crown Prosecution Service said no charges would be brought. Prosecutors said medical evidence showed she had suffered an epileptic seizure behind the wheel, and said there was no evidence that she had previously had a similar seizure or been diagnosed before the crash. The families of the girls criticised the decision and said they were still waiting for answers.
The Metropolitan Police reopened the investigation in October 2024 after an internal review found missed lines of inquiry. Those failures included not interviewing key witnesses about the driver’s behaviour immediately after the crash, a gap that went to the heart of how officers and prosecutors should assess responsibility when a sudden medical episode is raised as a defence. The Met also said the case had been reviewed by its Specialist Crime Review Group after concerns from the families, and later said an independent watchdog investigation was under way into how the case had been handled.
After the reinvestigation and fresh advice from prosecutors, Freemantle was charged in 2026 with two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and seven counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. The Crown Prosecution Service said the new charging decision followed significant new evidence from the reinvestigation, putting the case back before Westminster Magistrates’ Court and raising wider questions about driver fitness, school-zone safeguards and whether the system can respond properly when the first inquiry falls short.
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