Eight years for killing after car hit road sign during ‘turf war’

The incident happened when a rival groups of Somalis and Bengalis, some armed with sticks, baseball bats and metal bars, clashed in the streets of a Sheffield suburb.

Bengali Aminur Rahman was said by the prosecution to have deliberately driven his red Kia Picanto towards a group of Somalis on the pavement.

This action ended with an 18-year-old Somalian and Sheffield Hallam University civil engineering student, Abdulla Mohammed, dead from head injuries.

Mr Justice Treacy described the actions of driver Rahman as “sheer madness” and told the 20-year-old, who admitted manslaughter, that the incident was “a shocking and deliberately hostile piece of driving.”

The Somali group were out seeking revenge following rising tension after a fight between an 18-year-old Bengali and a Somalian youth a month earlier.

Simon Myerson QC, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court Rahman deliberately mounted the kerb “intending to stop the car in front of them and scare them and have an advantage in any subsequent confrontation.”

But Rahman, who had only been driving for four months and been laid up with a broken ankle, failed to control the car when his front nearside tyre burst.

The car struck a road sign which fell on Mr Mohammed’s head.

Said Mr Myerson: “He had the huge misfortune of being underneath it. That impact is the most likely cause of Abdulla Mohammed’s death. If it was not instant it was very shortly thereafter.”

The court was told the Bengalis were from the Darnall area of Sheffield and the Somalis from Burngreave and Pitsmoor. A group of eight Somalis travelled to Darnall on a No 52 bus on March 17 this year seeking retribution on the Bengalis. When they arrived fighting broke out and Rahman picked up various passengers before touring the Darnall area looking for Somalis.

Rahman told one friend: “We are on a mission.”

Witnesses saw the Somalis being chased, punched, kicked and hit with baseball bats by the larger Bengali group and reported that Rahman’s car was “flying about” in the hours leading up to the death.

Following the incident Rahman first told police he had mounted the kerb by accident but he later conceded he drove onto the pavement deliberately.

Adrian Waterman, for Rahman, said the guilt and shame he felt “would stay with him for the remainder of his days” and had even tried to call an ambulance.

But the judge said Rahman had been seeking “some sort of confrontation” that afternoon and his driving around Darnall was “hostile” rather than benign.

The judge later added: “You were using the car in that sense as a weapon and with the most flagrant disregard for the rules of the road.”

Rahman was sentenced to eight years in a young offenders’ institution and he was banned from driving for 10 years.

A passenger in his car Nizamul Hoque, 19, of Handsworth, has admitted causing violent disorder after a manslaughter charge against him was dropped. He is now trying to vacate his plea and will be dealt with later this week.

Another passenger in the Kia, Mohammed Kahar, 19, of Darnall, was cleared of manslaughter by a jury last Friday after a three-week trial.

A third passenger, Muhibur Jahangir, 20, from Darnall, was freed after the case against him collapsed.