A truck driver accused of murdering his teen girlfriend by crushing her against a lamppost has told a jury that he lied about a hit-and-run because he “panicked”.
Prosecutors allege that 19-year-old Lily Whitehouse suffered catastrophic chest injuries when Mohammed Azim used his flatbed truck “as a weapon” to pin her to the lamppost during an argument in Oldbury.
The events took place on Azim’s 41st birthday on 5 November 2025.
Azim, who is on trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court, has denied a charge of murder.
He told a jury that he hit Ms Whitehouse accidentally after dropping her off near her home – after initially telling police that another vehicle had hit her and driven off.
Prosecution counsel Rachel Brand KC told Azim, who cried in the witness box and dabbed his eyes with a tissue, that he had lied repeatedly about how Ms Whitehouse, who was a mother to a newborn baby fathered by another man, died.
He told police and paramedics that he had seen Ms Whitehouse get hit by a car that had driven off and left the scene, a story they found “strange”, but he told his trial he had accidentally run her over as he tried to leave her and go home.
“You were angry with her that night and you chased her down the road in your truck, didn’t you?” Ms Brand asked the defendant.
He said: “No that’s 100 per cent not true, there was no need for me to chase her… when I was about to leave she wanted to come back with me, that’s the truth.”
Ms Brand said the defendant told the 999 call handler he had seen her hit by a car because he was trying to protect himself.
“When you told that lie, you were thinking of yourself weren’t you, because you didn’t want to get the blame,” Ms Brand said during cross-examination.
The defendant replied: “I didn’t believe myself that this had happened. I was lost, my head was all over the place.”
Ms Brand added: “You kept up these lies when paramedics and police arrived, you told them it happened down there, you pointed at an SUV type vehicle and said it was like that one.
“You said ‘I wish I could have chased him’, didn’t you? You also said ‘That motherf*****, if I could catch him I would kill him’, didn’t you?”
Accepting he had said that, Azim said: “I wasn’t in control myself, I was totally lost.”
The prosecutor said that Azim had also lied repeatedly to doctors who had visited him while he was in custody, including saying he did not have a romantic relationship with the victim, that he could not speak to one professional because there was no Mirpuri interpreter, and that he could not have dropped Ms Whitehouse off at her home in Amber Drive, Oldbury, on the night of the fatal incident because there were “drugs people after her”.
Azim said he could not remember saying these things because he has been on medication.
Ms Brand said: “Your main thought has been to pretend it wasn’t your fault, isn’t it?”
The defendant replied: “No… it didn’t feel real to me, my head was all over the place, I panicked.”
Asked why he told police after his arrest that he could not remember what had happened to Ms Whitehouse, Azim said: “I wasn’t in my control, I was lost, I panicked.
“It was shocking, it was a shock.”
Ms Brand asked: “Didn’t you want to tell the police it had been a terrible accident?”
The defendant said: “It took me a long time to recover from this trauma, I was lost.”
The trial continues.
