Driver killed mother in rail line crash in Range Rover
Rida Kazem, 24, was driving beautician Yagmur Ozden, 33, and their friend Zamarod Arif, then aged 26, home from a night out in west London when he lost control.
The pair were thrown from the vehicle as it ploughed through a Tesla car park, ending up on a west London railway track.
MOST READ: Water company 'unable to confirm' when road closure will be lifted after flood[1]
Ms Ozden died of her injuries, while Kazem had his left leg amputated below the knee.
Ms Arif, who was the only one wearing a seatbelt, sustained serious injuries – including a broken arm and leg – in the crash, which happened near Ealing in the early hours of August 22.
There were gasps and sobs from members of Ms Ozden’s family as CCTV footage of the incident was played at Isleworth Crown Court, west London, on Wednesday.
A damaged Tesla car being removed from the scene of a fatal crash in Park Royal, west London, in which a Range Rover ended up on a railway track for the Piccadilly underground line (Image: PA)
Kazem’s black Range Rover Sport SVR, valued at up to £180,000, hit a top speed of 110mph on the 40mph-limit A40 westbound before he lost control, hitting a curb. Footage shows the airborne vehicle crash across a pavement, through a fence and into a lower-level car park.
Spinning nose-over-rear, the Range Rover hit a stationary Tesla, occupied by a taxi driver, who was charging the car, before the wreckage ended up on the tracks at Park Royal Tube station.
Judge Martin Edmunds KC jailed Kazem, from Greenford, west London, for seven and a half years after he previously pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
“The speed and violence of this crash is simply horrific, and the Range Rover was reduced to a mangled heap of metal,” the judge said.
“I have no doubt you were showing off to your passengers – showing off your powerful car but also what you thought of as your superior driving skills.
“What is all too clear is your skills were all too inadequate.”
Kazem will serve at least two-thirds of the sentence and was banned from driving for more than 12 years.
Wearing dark tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt, he had entered the dock on crutches in front of a court packed with members of his own family, as well as the victim’s relatives.
He smiled to the public gallery after he was sentenced and left unaided.
Speaking outside court after the sentencing, Ms Ozden’s 13-year-old daughter Melek said: “I’m not really happy with the sentence today but I really did feel sorry for him.
“When we left the court, he did say something really offensive and it just doesn’t give my mum any justice.
“It’s really offensive and it didn’t show he was sorry and there was no respect and the outcome was horrible and I don’t really like the sentence.
“Hopefully my mum does get justice some day.”
Yagmur Ozden’s sister Maya Kodsi (Image: PA)
Ms Ozden’s sister Maya Kodsi, 37, added: “We left the court in so much pain.
“They took the decision, it’s not enough and it’s not fair.
“There’s no punishment in this country.”
The court heard Kazem refused to allow an analysis of a blood sample taken while he was in hospital but the judge said he could not conclude he had been driving with excess alcohol.
Prosecutor Nicholas Hearn said he had previous speeding convictions, including one recent offence for driving 95mph in a 50mph zone and was banned from driving for six months in November 2020.
Kazem sat staring straight ahead as the prosecutor read out victim impact statements, including one from Melek, who now lives with her grandmother.
“I’m still in shock,” she said.
“Every time I see a Range Rover I remember the accident, so I can’t get away from it.”
The court heard that Kazem had suggested to the author of a pre-sentence report and his psychologist that he had not been driving the Range Rover and the judge said he had “found no evidence of real remorse”.
But David Rhodes, defending, said Kazem, who worked for a family jewellery business and had been accepted onto a university law course, “accepts through his guilty pleas that he was the driver”.
“He knows he has taken a life in Yagmur Ozden and left a young girl without a mother and he knows he very nearly killed himself in that accident,” he said.
References
- ^ Water company 'unable to confirm' when road closure will be lifted after flood (www.harrowtimes.co.uk)