Two men have been found guilty of murdering a pair of e-bike riders they had mistaken for burglars.
Alex Rose drove into William Birchard and Darren George as they rode home from the pub on a single e-bike in the early hours of July 22.
Rose, 30, deliberately crashed his pickup truck into the men on the M3/A316 slip road in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, just after 12.50am.
He had mistaken William, 21, and Darren, 22, for people he believed had tried to break into his home earlier that night, jurors at Guildford Crown Court were told.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer told jurors Rose phoned his friends Charles Pardoe and Samuel Aspden, both 25, to help search for the supposed burglars.
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Rose and Pardoe were driving around the local streets when they spotted William and Darren cycling from the King’s Fairway Pub in Ashford.
Rose chased the pair in his Ford Raptor at speeds of up to 60mph in a 30mph zone before crashing into William and Darren’s e-bike.
William died at the roadside, while Darren died in hospital later that day.
Rose drove past the men lying injured on the tarmac, ditched the truck and later reported that his vehicle had been stolen.
Officers tracked Rose to Birmingham Airport on July 23, as he was about to board a one-way flight to Istanbul with his girlfriend, Tara Knaggs.
The flight had been booked only hours before, with Rose carrying a single carry-on bag with a few items of clothing and £4,000 in cash.
Police arrested Rose on suspicion of murder and Knaggs on suspicion of assisting an offender while the couple were in the departure lounge.
Knaggs had told her mother it was a surprise trip for her birthday, arranged by Rose, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Rose and Pardoe were both found guilty of two counts of murder.
Knaggs, 25, from Great Ayton in Yorkshire, was found guilty of assisting an offender.
All will be sentenced at a later date. Aspden, 26, of Walton-on-Thames, was found not guilty.
Mary Walford, from the CPS, said: ‘Two men lost their lives as a result of Alex Rose wrongly believing that they were going to break into his property.
‘This was a tragic case of the two victims simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Detective Inspector Debbie Birch said Rose organised a ‘vigilante hunt’ rather than call the police about the supposed break-in.
‘He intended to take the law into his own hands, and his actions have led to the tragic loss of Darren and William, two young men who should have had their whole lives still ahead of them,’ Birch added.
‘Following the collision, Alex Rose fled the scene, demonstrating a total lack of regard for anyone except himself.’
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