A WOMAN killed at a car rally was moving to a safer spot when the crash happened, a fatal accident inquiry has heard.

Dean Robson told the panel at Edinburgh Sheriff Court that he and his mother Joy, 51, decided to move from the “dangerous” position at the 2013 Snowman Rally near Inverness because the cars were coming closer to them.

The 25-year-old said he saw a vehicle that looked like it was losing control before his mother was hit, sustaining multiple injuries.

The evidence was heard at a joint fatal accident inquiry into that event and the deaths of three other motorsports fans at the Jim Clark Rally near Coldstream the following year.

Dean, from Skye, said he and his mother had been standing with others close to a hairpin bend, adding: “We thought the position we were standing in was no longer safe as cars were coming down the hill and coming closer and closer.

“We made the decision at that time to move, but unfortunately it was too late.”

Describing the collision, he said: “I could hear trees crunching, screams and shouts. I looked to see where my mother was, and saw that my mother was on the floor. There was a tree hanging over her.”

Dean told the inquiry others helped him lift the tree off his mother in the “long time” before paramedics arrived, adding: “She was in and out of consciousness, screaming and shouting and then passing out.”

Rally driver Graeme Schoneville, 31, told how his car somersaulted into the air and rolled over several times when he hit a rock on the gravel track. He later found out that a woman had died and a child had been injured.

The father of the eight-year-old boy told how he was left face down under the vehicle before it was lifted off of him. He has since made a full recovery.

The inquiry, expected to last several weeks, is the first to be held in Scotland into deaths which happened in different parts of the country. It will go on to examine the deaths of Iain Provan, 64, Elizabeth Allan, 63, and Len Stern, 71, who died at the Jim Clark Rally.