8 years for former Huddersfield University student Anees Asghar who sped off after killing man while drunk-driving

A man was killed when he was struck by a car going over the speed limit, as he crossed the road after a night out.

Former Huddersfield University law student Anees Asghar – the driver of the silver Renault Megane which hit Andrew Richard Simpson in Great Horton Road, Bradford, – kept on going and switched his lights off after the collision, Leeds Crown Court heard yesterday.

But another motorist, Imran Hussain, who saw the car “leathering up the road” without lights realised the driver had been involved and followed Asghar to a pub car park.

When he saw Asghar, then a Huddersfield university student, and his two passengers getting out he told him to go back to the scene.

Ken Green prosecuting told the court that Asghar did take that advice and returned to the road where police had arrived.

Mr Simpson, who had been out with friends that evening in Huddersfield was dropped at the junction by taxi to walk across to his home nearby in Hollybank Gardens, Great Horton. He suffered multiple injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital hours later.

An accident investigator estimated Asghar was doing 38-45mph at the time he hit Mr Simpson who was thrown some distance, although the driver had been captured on CCTV passing a shop a short distance earlier doing 64mph in the 30mph zone.

Mr Green said the Megane that Asghar was driving was a courtesy car which it turned out he was not insured to drive and he was over the drink drive limit with a blood reading of 151 microgrammes the limit being 80.

The court heard before that case from October 2011 had been heard Asghar was also involved in stabbing a schoolboy with a screwdriver in Halifax, causing a punctured lung in January last year.

Asghar, 25, of Gibraltar Road, Halifax was jailed for a total of eight years and disqualified from driving for two years.

He had admitted causing death by careless driving and causing death by driving while uninsured on October 1, 2011, and was found guilty by a jury after a trial of wounding the teenager with intent and affray on January 5 last year.

Sentencing him, Recorder Christopher Attwooll said nothing he could say would alleviate to any extent the loss and sorrow to Mr Simpson’s parents “or help them to get over what to them is a personal tragedy caused by you.”

He said the speed was an indication of his “extreme carelessness” that night which was just short of dangerous driving at a time when Mr Simpson was acting perfectly normally when he tried to cross the road to go home.

Abdul Iqbal, for Asghar, said at the time he was not a very experienced driver and was returning from a shisha bar in Bradford when the tragedy occurred.

He had driven on and turned the lights out in panic but had returned to the scene when advised to do so. He had hoped to use his law degree which he had now completed to become a solicitor but that was not to be.