KHANGURA:HIT AND RUN DRIVER SPARED JAIL OVER FATAL COLLISION WITH TOT

A hit-and-run motorist who fled the scene of a fatal collision with a 22-month-old toddler walked free from court.

Gurpal Khangura, 34, hit two-year-old Aashir Zeeshan as the boy crossed the road back to his mother Sumaira.

The child was hurled up to 16 metres by the impact with Khangura’s blue VW Golf and later died of head injuries.

Khangura had been due to stand trial for causing death by careless driving but the charge was dropped when Aashir’s mother said she would not attend court to give evidence.

He was instead charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

Judge Simon Wilkinson said the ‘exceptional’ circumstances allowed him to pass a three month prison sentence suspended for 12 months.

The judge said: ‘Your failure to remain at the scene following this tragic accident was a grave example of this offence.

‘This was not a case involving mere damage to other vehicles you had hit a small child, as that child ran into the road from between parked cars – you knew you had hit a small child.

‘I take into account, first of all, that you only drove off after you knew that the child was attended.

‘I accept your account that you genuinely panicked when you saw other people come to the scene and then drove off.

‘I accept that you would have reported the matter to the police, as indeed you had reported it other members of your family.

‘In this case there has to be a prison sentence and that sentence will be one of three months.

‘However, in view of the matters argued by both the probation officer and your counsel I am, on this occasion, exceptionally prepared to suspend it.’

The collision occurred in Salisbury Avenue, Barking, Essex, at around 7.45pm on July 5 last year.

Prosecutor Lesley Jones said: ‘Aashir Zeeshan ran into the road, a residential side street, to meet his mother on the other side of the road getting something from her vehicle.

‘The defendant was proceeding along that road in his vehicle and he collided with the chid.

‘The evidence showed that Gurpal Khangura stopped momentarily and looked back and then drove off from the scene.’

Khangura was arrested a hour later at his home address.

Earlier this month the same court heard Aashir’s mother Sumaira, 25, was due to give key evidence about the speed Khangura was travelling at when he hit the toddler.

It emerged at that hearing she is now heavily pregnant, may be abroad and is not willing to give evidence.

The prosecution offered no evidence against Khangura in respect of the charge of causing death by dangerous driving after Judge Simon Wilkinson refused to accept a written statement from Sumaira.

‘She will not cooperate because she wants to put this matter behind her,’ the judge added.

Khangura’s defence counsel Neil Guest spoke of him as a hardworking husband and father-of-one who felt guilt hanging over his head. 

He said: ‘You have before you a good family man – a man with no driving record – not some reckless hooligan driving a hot-hatch and terrorising the community, but a man who was using his car for work and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Khangura, of (48) Swiftsure Road, Chafford Hundred, Grays, Essex, admitted failing to stop after an accident but denied causing death by dangerous driving.

As well as a three month suspended sentence he was ordered to complete 100 hours unpaid work, banned from driving for 12 months and made the subject of a three-month-long curfew between 8pm and 5.30am.

Aashir’s father Syed, 35, an accountant, had said after the tragedy: ‘All of our happiness has been taken away.

‘Why didn’t the driver stop. I want him to see what’s been done to my son.’

ENDS