A Ballymena man has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for killing two teenage passengers while under the influence of alcohol.
Paul Jude Johnston (34), from the Ballymena Road in Ballymena killed David John McAuley (15) and Gavin William O'Neill (16) when he lost control of his Ford Escort Cosworth.
Prosecution QC Richard Weir told the Ballymena Court that Johnston had been "hurtling" along the Marine Road in Carnlough between 120 and 140 mph when the accident happened when a wheel clipped a kerb on a sweeping bend, careering the car backwards into a filling station.
The lawyer said Johnston had been drinking heavily in a bar before deciding to go home and get his car keys to attend a wake.
Johnston was "catapulted" through the windscreen and walked away with just cuts and bruises, but his rear seat passengers, David John McAuley and Gavin William O'Neill, were killed instantly.
Johnston, who has two previous convictions for careless driving and a conviction for drink driving, later pleaded guilty to two charges of causing death by dangerous driving, drink driving and having no insurance.
The judge declared: "It seems that the number of increasing vehicles here and their increased capacity for speed is producing more of these cases. Graphic advertisements on television and increasingly severe sentences may not deter people effectively but they must be used together."
Sending Johnston to jail, Judge Smyth told him the two boys did not know he had been drinking "nor could they possibly have appreciated the dangers they were subjecting themselves to".