Tipton driver accused of girlfriend’s murder would ‘say vile things and punch her’
A prosecution witness told the jury the mother-of-one from Oldbury was “besotted” with her alleged killer
An alleged murder victim went into premature labour after the man later accused of taking her life “sped off” in his vehicle, causing her to fall to the ground, the jury was told.
Recovery truck driver Mohammed Azim is on trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court accused of murdering his 19-year-old girlfriend Lily Whitehouse in Oldbury on November 5 last year, two months after she gave birth to a premature baby that was fathered by another man.
Giving evidence for the prosecution her aunt Melissa Wheeler told the jury on Thursday (June 11) that her niece met Azim, who she referred to as ‘H’, when she was 16 or 17 after they exchanged numbers in West Bromwich High Street and began a relationship.
Ms Wheeler told the trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court that her niece had been “besotted” with Azim, but that the pair would fight and the defendant would sometimes block her when she tried to speak to him.
Robert Price, junior prosecution counsel, asked Ms Wheeler about how Miss Whitehouse came to go into labour 10 weeks early in September. She replied that she was aware that Azim was not the father of the baby and that he was “not happy” that she was pregnant, so she would hide her bump with long clothing when she visited him.
“She said she had an argument with H,” Ms Wheeler said. “I’m not sure what it was about and H sped off in the car and she fell over and cut her hand. The next day she had pains in her tummy and she said she didn’t want to tell H because he was asleep and I said ‘you need to call the hospital because you might be in early labour’.”
The 19-year-old went to Russells Hall Hospital the next day in a taxi and her baby was born soon after.
Libby Higgs, a friend of the victim, also told the jury about the nature of Ms Whitehouse’s relationship with the defendant.
“She told me he used to say vile things to her, he used to punch her and do things to her like that and at points it would mark her arms. She asked him why he did that and he said it was play fighting. She said to me ‘it’s not play fighting because he’s marking me and I’ve got bruises on my arms’.
“She had to wear jackets to hide them. She said she covered them herself because she didn’t want people seeing. She said they had a lot of arguments and he would tell her to ’f*** off’ and leave him. She said he would ring her using no caller ID and he would drive past where she lived to see if he could see her.
“She used to voice note me a lot and sometimes she would be crying. I used to tell her she needed to leave him because he was no good for her and it would only get worse if she didn’t leave him.
“She knew the relationship she was in wasn’t a healthy one and she knew she had to leave him but she didn’t know what it was, she couldn’t leave him.”
Ms Higgs told the court of an incident around a year before she died in which Ms Whitehouse called her and she could hear Azim shouting in the background. When she spoke to the victim a few hours later, Ms Whitehouse explained they had been arguing and while in Azim’s car, he had “picked up her phone and chucked it at her face”.
She added that the young mother had been trying to breastfeed her newborn, but was not producing enough milk.
Ms Higgs said: “He called her a dumb, silly bitch and she was no good at being a mum because she couldn’t even feed her baby properly. She said when [the baby] was discharged she was going to leave H because she knew she couldn’t remain in a relationship with him because of social services.”
Azim, aged 41 and of Tividale Road in Tipton, is accused of hitting the victim with his white flatbed truck in Old Park Lane, in Oldbury, during a row, pinning her to a lamp post as a result and causing her chest injuries and severe bleeding.
The defendant denies murder. The trial continues.