A man posted a selfie showing him in his car with three children shortly before he tried to murder them by driving at speed into oncoming traffic, a court heard today.

Tancredo Bankhardt, 41, allegedly put the image on Instagram as he spent two hours driving his Vauxhall Astra up and down the same road with his young passengers, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Just under two hours later, the barman is said to have accelerated up to 74mph and veered on to the wrong side of the 60mph limit road before smashing into an oncoming car near Loddon, Norfolk.

The crash on September 26 last year, which left two of the children seriously injured, happened after Bankhardt also sent a series of audio messages to a woman, allegedly threatening to take his own life.

The woman, who also cannot be identified, told a jury today how the messages and calls from him had left her 'really scared'.

One suggested he might be intending to take his own life and was asking for forgiveness, saying: 'I hope God doesn't treat me badly up there… See you in the next life.'

The court has heard how Brazilian Bankhardt - who was described in court yesterday as being 'emotionally' upset at the time of the crash - had earlier told the woman that he had picked up the children and taken them to a bowling alley in Lowestoft, Suffolk.

Giving evidence from behind a screen at Norwich Crown Court, she said that she did not follow his social media and did not see the image of him with the children until her friends told her about it.

The woman said she called police, telling a 999 controller that Bankhardt was 'going out of control' and she feared he was going to kill himself and the children.

She told officers who rushed to her home within minutes that she had no idea where he was when he was sending her the 'strange messages'.

Unbeknown to her and police, Bankhardt was driving up and down the A146 road west of Lowestoft, while repeatedly turning round at roundabouts to retrace his steps.

The woman wept as she told jurors: 'I didn't realise to be honest that this was going to happen. I tried to put something for the police to act.'

The trial heard how Bankhardt of Great Yarmouth Norfolk, allegedly failed to secure seatbelts around his young passengers before deliberately crashing his car 'at some speed'.

Prosecutor Stephen Rose KC said Bankhardt had 'intended to end his own life' and the lives of the three children 'by deliberately orchestrating a road traffic accident'.

The defendant appeared to be 'distressed and sobbing' in calls to the woman and was 'becoming increasingly desperate and depressed', while stating that he was driving 'to clear his head'.

He was on a call to his brother, who was encouraging him to head home, when there was the sound of 'a loud bang' from a collision at 8.33pm.

Bankhardt had put on his full beam headlights and deliberately veered his blue Astra into the path of a red Honda SUV, driven by Lukasz Wawrzenlzyk, it is claimed.

A black Audi A5 driven by John Huggins behind the Honda was also involved in the collision.

One of the children in Bankhardt's car suffered serious wounds including a cut to a cheek, a bleed on the brain and a collapsed lung while another had serious injuries to their head, back and a leg which was fractured. 

Mr Wawrzenlzyk had been unable to avoid a collision, despite steering into the verge and ending up in a ditch, Mr Rose said.

He also suffered significant injuries, while Mr Huggins had injuries to his chest and abdomen, jurors were told.

Bankhardt, who had significant leg injuries, later gave a statement to police, insisting that the crash was not intentional and he would never deliberately hurt himself or anyone else.

He claimed that the crash was as a result of his emotional state, combined with being dazzled by the oncoming headlights of cars.

The court heard how forensic vehicle examiner found no mechanical defects with the car or any reason for Bankhardt losing control.

Mr Rose said: 'We, the prosecution, say this was a deliberate collision as a result of a terrible decision taken by Mr Bankhardt, who was in, no doubt, a state of heightened emotion, but it was no doubt a clear decision.'

'The central decision in this case may well concern what precisely the defendant was intending to do when his car collided with others.

'You will be wanting to think, may it have been a case that was a simple accident and nobody intended anything terrible to happen?

'Or, may it have been a case that the defendant may have wanted to cause some serious injury by his actions but perhaps short of killing anyone?

'Or, as the prosecution say, the evidence points to something far graver, in that Mr Bankhardt decided that none of the occupants of the car, himself included, should walk from the collision, namely he intended they should all die in the impact.'

Mr Rose said that Bankhardt had fastened the seatbelts in the car by placing them into their buckles before sitting the children on top so they were not secured.

He told jurors: 'The prosecution say it points firmly into the direction that their seat belts were not meant to be doing their job that night.

'Mercifully, whilst serious injuries were caused in the collision, thankfully no lives were lost. But a number of people involved received significant injuries.'

Bankhardt denies three counts of attempted murder, relating to the children, and two counts of causing serious injury to two of them by dangerous driving.

He also denies causing injury by dangerous driving to Mr Wawrzenlzyk, and a seventh charge of dangerous driving.

The trial continues.