Six people were injured but that did not stop them coming to blows as two of their friends lay dead around them
A fight broke out on the M1 today after two friends died in a high-speed car crash.
Police are probing a witness’s claim that two BMWs were travelling at up to 140mph in heavy rain when one clipped the barrier and hit the other.
A Mercedes C220 then pulled up on the motorway near where the mangled cars had come to a halt and a group of men started brawling with survivors.
Onlooker Basit Nasir, 47, said: “It was total mayhem. There was mangled metal everywhere.
“It was foolish of them to drive at this sort of speed. It was raining as well.”
The car dealer was overtaken by the two BMWs on the southbound carriage-way near Watford, Hertfordshire, at 2.40am.
One car, a 5 series, hit the central reservation, bounced off a bridge and then hurtled in the path of the second car, Mr Nasir said.
Four men who arrived at the scene in the Mercedes then got out and began fighting.
He added: “They all jumped out and everybody started punching each other. They said ‘What have you done? You have killed them’.”
Scores of police, firefighters and paramedics arrived at the scene quickly but the victims, aged 22 and 24 and from East London, were declared dead.
They were the driver and a passenger in the 5 series.
The other two men in the car, and the four in the second vehicle, were taken to hospital.
The driver of the second car, 25, was discharged later in the day and was arrested.
The man, also from East London, was tonight being quizzed on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
It is believed the men had been out in Luton and Milton Keynes and were on their way back to London.
Mr Nasir said he tried to break the fight up while calling police from his mobile phone.
He managed to help the front seat passenger out of one BMW, but he appeared badly dazed.
The driver had been thrown across to the passenger side of the car and was “totally limp”, Mr Nasir said.
The Highways Agency closed five junctions of the M1 for around nine hours so emergency services could deal with the aftermath of the crash.