A recovery truck driver accused of murdering his teenage girlfriend by pinning her against a lamppost with his vehicle told a jury he never wanted to hurt her.
Charges and Incident
Prosecutors allege Lily Whitehouse, 19, suffered catastrophic chest injuries when Mohammed Azim used his flatbed truck “as a weapon” to crush her during an argument in Oldbury on his 41st birthday on November 5 last year. Azim, who is on trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court and denies murder, told a jury today, Monday, June 15, that he hit Ms Whitehouse accidentally after dropping her off near her home.
Defendant's Testimony
The defendant wiped his eyes with a tissue in the witness box as he denied the two, who had been in an on-off relationship since 2023, had been arguing on the night of the fatal incident. He said he picked Ms Whitehouse up after she got off a bus from Russells Hall Hospital where she had been visiting her baby, who was fathered by another man and born prematurely, in the neonatal intensive care unit. He said he was going to drop her home in Amber Drive, Oldbury.
Ms Whitehouse allegedly asked him to sit with her for ten minutes before she went home, so he pulled up in Old Park Lane nearby because it was a wider road for his van and the two chatted and scrolled on their phones. Asked by his defence counsel Imran Shafi KC if they had been arguing, Azim said: “No, no argument or nothing. She said she wanted to come with me, she didn’t want to go home.”
“I was saying I need to go, it’s been ten minutes now I need to go home and have an early night, I had to get up early and go to work but she was pleading with me that she wanted to go with me. She said 'I don’t want go home, I want to spend more time'.”
Azim said he got out of the van to hug her as she continued to ask to go back to his home. He said: “She come in the front (of the van) and was stopping me, she was saying 'no I’m not letting you go, I want to go with you'. I go back to the driver’s side, open the door and get in the truck and close the door. She was trying to come in front of the truck. She’s trying to stop me from the front. I said 'please let me go'. She was trying to stop the van.”
Azim said he started to drive slowly to the left to go around Ms Whitehouse but had to swerve back to the right because of parked cars. He said: “I hear a bang at the back. It could have been Lily jumping on the truck. I felt something bump the back. I feel the back tyres, like something come under the tyre or something drop under the tyre. I slammed the brake and straight away stopped. I looked back and saw Lily on the floor in the middle of the road.”
Actions After the Incident
Explaining why he put Ms Whitehouse in his van as he called 999, Azim said: “I couldn’t believe this was real. I was lost. I phoned the ambulance, I didn’t want to waste time and wait for an ambulance, I wanted to take her to the hospital. I didn’t want to wait for nobody. I just wanted to take her to the hospital, sometimes the ambulance is too long when you need them.”
Azim said he pulled up in nearby Park Street while on the phone to 999 because he “couldn’t see the road straight” and his head was “all over the place”. He said: “It was scary … I didn’t think she was breathing. I was still praying and hoping she is unconscious and hoping the ambulance get there quick but it takes a long time.”
Azim wiped his eyes with a tissue as Mr Shafi asked him how he felt that he had killed Ms Whitehouse and why he told the emergency services he had seen another car hit her. He said: “I didn’t believe all this at the time that it was me. I know I have lied, it was a lie, but I don’t know, I couldn’t believe this had happened. At that time, I don’t know, I was lost, my head was totally gone, I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, I just couldn’t believe it happened with me.”
He added: “My head is hurting all this time … I wish this never happened.” Asked if he intended to hurt Ms Whitehouse, Azim replied: “I never wanted to hurt Lily.”
Background of Relationship
The court heard Azim came to the UK in 2001 around the age of 14 and went to college and worked in takeaway restaurants to learn English. He was married in 2007 but had been single and living alone since his marriage ended in 2015. The defendant told the jury Ms Whitehouse relied on him for support and that she did not have many friends, so would text and call him often while he was working.
He said: “When I was working she was messaging me, if I can’t reply to it or I’m doing something, I got a recovery truck and I do the cars and that, sometimes I have gloves on my hands and can’t message her. I could understand, she was lonely, she got close to me and relying on me, she didn’t have any friends.”
Azim denied ever assaulting Ms Whitehouse and said she would text him asking if he was with another woman for “attention”. He said: “She send messages that are not true to get my attention. I got to know her background, I had a similar childhood to her. I wanted to help her and be there for her. I never took anything serious because I could understand where she was coming from. She would see me and say sorry to me, she knew she was saying wrong on the phone just to see me. She never meant anything, it was nothing serious. I could understand why she was doing that, she never had no-one else.”
The trial continues.
