A young father has been warned he will be sent to jail after a jury found his driving caused the deaths of two teenage passengers.

Shaun Waters was “snaking or mucking about”, said a judge, when his car was in a head-on crash with a lorry on the A20 near Lenham on February 28 last year.

Daisy Washington, 14, from Ashford, and Joe Bunce, 17, from Harrietsham, were killed. Waters and Daisy’s friend Alaina Cowell, 15, were badly injured.

Waters’s stepdaughter, aged five, escaped injury.

The former soldier, 22, of Magpie Hall Road, Chatham, denied two charges of causing death by dangerous driving but was convicted of both by an 11-1 majority.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that Waters had driven in his mother’s Ford Escort to a primary school in Lenham to collect his stepdaughter.

After picking up the little girl, Miss Washington and Miss Cowell were given a lift.

The car was approaching Charing when the tragedy happened.

Diane Coffey, who was driving behind, later described the Escort “snaking” from left to right.

The car went over a grass verge and then back into the path of an oncoming lorry.

Miss Cowell spent several weeks in hospital. She had fractures her skull, to an arm, wrist, fingers, leg, jaw, cheekbones, eye socket and nose.

Five plates were fitted into her face and permanent pins inserted in her leg and arm.

Judge James O’Mahony remanded Waters in custody for reports until August 15.

Full story in Thursday's Kentish Express