Truck driver denies crushing girlfriend against post

A man accused of murdering his on-off girlfriend by pinning her up against a lamp-post with his truck told police he "didn't do no murder" after he was arrested, a court has heard.

Mohammed Azim is alleged to have killed 19-year-old Lily Whitehouse in Oldbury, in the West Midlands, during an argument on 5 November last year, the day of his 41st birthday.

The recovery truck driver allegedly put her in his truck while dialling 999 and then put her on a pavement in a nearby road and told police she was the victim of a hit-and-run.

Azim, of Tividale Road in Tipton, denies murder at Wolverhampton Crown Court.

Azim met Whitehouse after she had just been to visit her baby, born in September last year, in a neonatal intensive care unit at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley.

The pair had been in an on-off relationship since since 2023 and the baby was fathered by another man, jurors heard.

On the day she died, CCTV audio from a nearby school captured Whitehouse walking quickly along Old Park Lane on the driver's side, with the truck pursuing her, prosecutor Rachel Brand KC said.

The truck then disappeared from view, and a "large bang" could be heard which was the sound of it striking a lamp-post, she told the court.

Azim allegedly then picked her up and drove to nearby Park Street and put her on the pavement before the emergency services arrived.

He then told them about the hit-and-run, which emergency crews found "strange", jurors were told.

In police interviews on 6 November, Azim was asked by detectives if he knew what murder meant.

He is said to have responded: "Yeah I know, but I didn't do no murder. Please just save me."

Brand said he then told detectives: "Can you just try and take my life man... I don't know who is after me man. Not you, not you, but someone is."

He suggested someone was "after him" and wanted to kill him, responding to one question: "Why would I hit her man, why would I run her over man, please, please man. No comment man."

He said that he could not remember anything and knew nothing, and that the questions were "hurting his head".

The trial continues.

Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.