Mum runs to crash scene and collapses as she finds her son lying dead on the road
A mum ran from her home to a crash scene after hearing her young son had been involved – then collapsed in the street when she found him dead.
Heyfa Akubar, 43, made the mile-and-a-half journey on foot from Woolwich Dockyard to Greenwich Islamic Centre after learning Mustafa Ahmed had been hit by a motorbike. The youngster was holding dad Mohamed Mao’s hand and was walking alongside brother Ahmed Ahmed as they made their way to a mosque for evening prayers.
All three were hit in the crash as they crossed at the traffic lights outside the mosque. Mustafa was thrown several yards into the road and died at the scene. Bus driver Mohamed, 49, suffered severe head injuries and a shattered hip, leaving him in a coma for weeks – and unable to even remember anything when he finally woke, as the Mirror reported previously. Ahmed, 11, suffered a punctured liver and neck lacerations.
It comes as unlicensed and uninsured Nicholas Hopkins, 20, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving at Inner London Crown Court last week. Police have since released his mugshot in which he is grinning broadly.
Family friend Swaleh Bocus, who joined Mohamed at the scene to speak to the Mirror, had been praying inside the centre when it was announced there had been an accident. The congregation all went outside. Swaleh said he saw Heyfa come rushing through the police cordon and collapse to the ground in tears – though he didn’t recognise her at first. He said: “I saw a lady crossing the police cordon so I shouted ‘you are not allowed to go there’, not knowing that was the mum.
“She had seen her son’s things, she knew he had died. She just fell down and collapsed and the officers and paramedics surrounded her to comfort her. She didn’t stand up for nearly half an hour, she was just crying. They said ‘leave her! Don’t run to her! She’s the mum!’ She could see the boy.”
Mohamed continues to use the same Islamic centre but now has to be taken by car. However, Heyfa prays at a different mosque. They are hoping to move out of the house and are on the council’s waiting list. “The children and my wife don’t want to stay in the house,” he said. “There are too many memories.” Ahmed – who shared a bedroom with Mustafa – now sleeps with one of his sisters. “He won’t go in his old room, none of the children will,” said Mohamed. “Only me and my wife go in there sometimes but it’s not easy, there’s so much memory in there.”
Asked how Ahmed’s recovery has gone, he said: “He’s recovered but not perfectly. He likes to be alone, he’s quiet all the time. He wants to be sitting alone and keep quiet. Before he was more open. He was very outgoing; now he’s withdrawn, even at school.”
Mohamed said he and Heyfa will sometimes ask Ahmed about his brother and what happened, but he refuses to answer. “They were very close, the only boys in the house,” he explained. “He doesn’t want to talk about it. We even try to talk to him, me and his mum, we ask him things or talk about his brother but he won’t.”
Mohamed did not even remember who Mustafa was when he first woke from his coma, weeks after the crash on February 19. “I can’t remember anything, I don’t know what happened that night,” he explained.