A speeding taxi driver who killed a pedestrian just 16 minutes after being let off with a warning by police over his driving was jailed for almost seven years yesterday.
Shakoor Ahmed, 46, was told by a judge he had behaved with ‘gross arrogance’ on the roads on the night he crashed into 32-year-old landscape gardener Dan Beames.
Ahmed was pulled over by two policemen moments earlier while driving with a passenger, and they issued him a formal warning for speeding.
The officers had charitably decided not to charge him with the offence because of the impact a conviction might have on his sixteen-year taxi driving career.
In bodycam footage released after the sentencing, an officer let Ahmed off with a warning, after telling him: ‘Just don’t do it again. I don’t want you or anyone else to get hit or hurt.
‘I’ve seen far too many nasty accidents in my time, and that (his driving) was silly.’
But Gloucester Crown Court heard that Ahmed did not heed the warning—in fact, he boasted about it to his next two passengers when he picked them up at Gloucester Bus station and drove them to Cheltenham in his Toyota Prius taxi.
He struck Mr Beames, who was crossing the street with a freshly bought box of beer under his arm to drink with friends while driving at 100 mph along a bypass that connected the two places. The court heard that he was still travelling 53 mph on a 40 mph route in the town.
Ahmed could not avoid him and the pedestrian suffered catastrophic brain injuries.
Mr Beames’ mother, Yvette White and his partner Jessica Beames, a paramedic who has since changed her surname to his, both read emotional statements to the judge describing the devastation his loss had caused to them and the rest of his family.
Mrs White, a financial administrator, said the death of the youngest of her three children was the second tragedy to hit her because she had lost a daughter in 2020 – and she herself had then been diagnosed with cancer.
She said she has been on anxiety medications since the tragedy, she does not sleep properly any more, and she keeps thinking of her last image of him in hospital with his life ebbing away.
The perpetrator who caused this awful crash should surely receive a much longer sentence, bearing in mind, the fact that he had only just been ordered by the police to slow down and drive correctly.
This criminal should never be trusted to operate a vehicle again, and he should never be permitted to work as a cab driver again due to his willful disobedience of the law.
This man did not receive a meaningful sentence and the victim and family will never get proper justice. He took a life, and he should have been punished accordingly.
When will taking a life get appropriate punishment? What an insult to the grieving family—six years, and he’ll be out in three. This man should have got a minimum of ten years because this was a tragic loss of life. After all, the taxi driver thought he was a boy racer.
This was a very lenient sentence by the judge, especially for taking a life. Is that all someone’s life is worth now?
Anyone who operates a motor vehicle, especially professionally, ought to conduct themselves with the utmost integrity.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 