A mother has been convicted of killing her teenage daughter and her son’s girlfriend in a horror crash while high on drugs.
Anastasia James, 37, smoked cannabis before losing control of her black Astra convertible on the M1.
Her 14-year-old daughter Destiny James-Keeling and son’s girlfriend Megan Marchant, 18, were both killed in the smash.
They died almost instantly when the passenger side of the car was crushed in the tragedy in January 2014.
James’s 18-year-old son Wade James-Keeling was also in the car and suffered broken bones and bruises.
When police officers got to the scene of the crash they could smell “the unmistakable aroma of cannabis”.
The smash happened in Leicestershire as James was driving home from her nephew’s 1st birthday party in London.
She veered towards the central reservation “for no apparent reason” at 70mph after overtaking a car near junction 19.
The vehicle then travelled back across the three lanes of the motorway before flying over a storm drain and hitting a tree.
Other motorists described seeing James, a private investigator, driving “erratically” and swerving across the lanes.
The court heard 1.5g of the class C drug was found in the pocket of her son’s jacket when it was searched in hospital.
A blood sample she gave to police suggested she had been smoking cannabis shortly before the crash.
When questioned by police James said it was “ages” since she had used cannabis.
Asked if she would drive after taking it, she replied: “No,especially driving with kids as well. I would not go on the motorway if I was high.”
Prosecutor Michael Evans QC told Leicester Crown Court that what James did was “simply unforgivable”.
She claimed to jurors that she may have “unknowingly” taken cannabis the night before the accident.
James, from Braunstone, Leicester, denied two counts of causing death through careless driving while unfit through drugs.
But jurors found her guilty of both offences after deliberating for just one hour.
James, who has an 11-month-old daughter, will be sentenced next month and was told to expect a “long” jail term.
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