A jury has been told how a community stalwart went on a “rampage” and ran down two pedestrians in her Jaguar.
Hilda Lumsden-Gill is accused of driving dangerously in her green X-Type and leaving the two women she hit seriously injured.
But the community council chairwoman – who is epileptic – has lodged a special defence claiming she was having a “complex partial seizure” and was in a state of “automatism”.
The 59-year-old went on trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday.
The prosecution and defence have agreed she drove her car into a parked red Ford Ranger pick-up truck before mounting the pavement and hitting Pauline Thomson, throwing her on to the bonnet.
Lumsden-Gill then drove off with Ms Thomson still on the bonnet.
And when the pedestrian fell off the front of her car, she then mounted the pavement in Huntly’s Bogie Street again and knocked down Georgina Couper.
The jury of nine women and six men heard yesterday in a joint minute of agreed evidence that Lumsden-Gill had previously had her driving licence revoked by the DVLA three times in the last 20 years after suffering seizures.
Kevin Paul Rayner, a company director from Oxfordshire, was in the north-east on business and was behind the Jaguar when the events unfolded.
He described seeing the car hitting the two women on the pavement as “like something out of a film”.
He said: “The Jaguar continued driving like nothing had happened.
“I thought it was intentional. My next move was going to be to block the car.
“I thought we had a rampage on the go.”
He added that he had “20-20 vision” and did not require glasses.
The court heard that Pauline Thomson was left face down in the road with Huntly Community Council chairwoman Lumsden-Gill carrying on at a sedate “20 to 22mph” through the town centre.
However, just a short distance down the road she bumped her car on to the pavement again, throwing Ms Couper into the air with the impact this time.
Mr Rayner said that after hitting Ms Couper and then rejoining the road the car came to a halt a short distance away and Lumsden-Gill got out and looked back.
But Lumsden-Gill’s counsel, advocate Niall McClusky, quizzed the witness on his medical knowledge and asked how he could have known it was intentional if he did not know the effects of an epileptic fit.
Several witnesses were quoted in the joint minute saying that she had looked “very disorientated”, “a little bit dozy” and “confused” after causing the midday chaos in the street.
Patricia Scott, 58, said she had been at a community trust meeting with Lumsden Gill the previous month when the 59-year-old had suffered a “bad turn”.
Ms Scott said: “During the discussion Mrs Lumsden-Gill started chatting incoherently.
“She seemed to have directed her conversation at a kitchen unit door.”
The court heard that Ms Thomson suffered a severe brain injury and fractured skull while Ms Couper was left with bruising to her head and body and a fractured ankle.
Ms Thomson had to be airlifted to hospital.
Mr McCluskey has lodged a special defence of “automatism” claiming his client was “acting automatically” when the incidents occurred on May 7, 2014.
The trial, before Sheriff William Summers, continues.
