‘Monster’ raver fatally punched deaf woman then said ‘no-one cares’, court told

A “monster” raver punched a deaf woman and left her dying on the street, allegedly telling his horrified friends: “No-one cares about her.”

Zahwa Mukhtar, 27, was thrown out of an overcrowded Mercedes car and attacked by Duane Owusu, nicknamed Nasty, in the early hours of Saturday August 16 last year, the Old Bailey was told.

On Thursday, one of the women in the car told jurors Ms Mukhtar, an aspiring accountant, did not “deserve” what happened, even though she had been behaving like “chaos”.

Giving evidence behind a screen, Paige Allen said Ms Mukhtar had latched on to her group of friends as they took laughing gas in the street after going to a rave in Hackney, east London.

When they decided to head home to Dagenham, she jumped in the car too, Ms Allen said.

She told jurors: “I remember just saying, ‘Why is she coming with us?’ No-one wanted to be with her. Just the vibe, she just didn’t seem with it. She just seemed chaos. I assumed she had been taking drugs.”

Asked why Ms Mukhtar was allowed in the car, Ms Allen said: “I believe she was on Nasty’s lap. She was moving erratic with the boys so I believe they are being boys thinking with their downstairs rather than their upstairs.”

Ms Allen told jurors that Ms Mukhtar called her “white trash”, poked her on the shoulder and grabbed her hair.

When Ms Mukhtar appeared to be recording on her phone, Owusu called for the driver to stop the car in Chadwell Heath, jurors were told.

Weeping in court, Ms Allen said: “He was just shouting, ‘You dumb bitch’. He threw her phone and ejected her out of the car.

“I remember her holding on to him pleading with him to stop. She was on the floor on her bum outside the car.

“He aimed two kicks towards her and this is when she tried to get herself back up again. He swung his arm and hit her, like a punching motion with his fist.”

Ms Allen and her female friend got out of the car and tried to stop Owusu, the witness said: “It was too much. He took it too far.

“She didn’t deserve to be thrown out the car the way he was doing so.

“He was lost. I don’t think there was no controlling him from there. He just seemed so angry, he was shouting at us to get back in the f****** car.

“He was just rage. He looked like a monster. His behaviour was just wrong. She just fell. Just fell backwards.

“I went to help her but he screamed at me to get in the car.”

Ms Allen told jurors that none of the other people in the car agreed with what Owusu had done and there was shouting as they drove away.

She went on: “The driver turned back to go to check on her and I remember Nasty shouting, ‘Just f****** leave her alone. No-one cares about her’.

“The car drove back off and we were stopped up the road by the police.”

The Mercedes occupants were detained for around 50 minutes before officers investigated reports from two members of the public of a woman on the pavement down the road.

Ms Mukhtar was found unresponsive at 5.31am and despite the efforts of police and paramedics at the scene, she was pronounced dead at 6.21am, having suffered a brain injury.

Ms Allen told jurors she started to “panic” after hearing that police had been to Owusu’s home later that morning.

She said: “I think from that point we sort of knew that she was dead or something bad had happened to her.”

Prosecutor Henrietta Paget KC asked why she then booked into a hotel in Dagenham.

Ms Allen replied: “We were just panicking and scared of what could happen, being caught up in it, someone coming and telling us to shhh and keep quiet.”

She was attending a birthday party in Devon when she learned that police had gone to her grandmother’s house looking for her.

She then contacted officers and made a statement about what happened, the court was told.

Ms Allen told the jury: “I wish I’d helped her and she listened to me and not got in the car.”

Owusu, from Dagenham, has pleaded not guilty to murder and the alternative charge of manslaughter.

The Old Bailey trial continues.