Mohammed Azim, 41, has today been jailed for life for murdering his 19-year-old girlfriend Lily Whitehouse. He used his van as a weapon to crush the helpless teenager just hours after she visited her newborn daughter in hospital
Lily Whitehouse, 19, was killed on Old Park Lane in Oldbury, West Midlands(Image: gofundme / SWNS)
Lily Whitehouse had everything ready to bring her baby girl home from hospital – but she never stood a chance.
Just hours after visiting her premature daughter in an intensive care unit, the 19-year-old, described as a young woman “full of light, laughter, and kindness,” was murdered by her on-off boyfriend, 41-year-old Mohammed Azim.
The recovery truck driver used his van as a weapon to crush the teen to death against a lamppost, before telling a vicious web of lies to try and cover his tracks. Today, he has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 20 years.
On 5 November 2025, Lily called Azim after her hospital visit in Dudley, West Midlands, and he picked her up. It’s thought they argued, and Lily got out of the truck before Azim chased her down and drove the vehicle into her.
The court was shown harrowing footage of Azim pushing the teen with his van before causing catastrophic chest injuries. CCTV from a nearby school captured the sound of Azim’s recovery truck idling just out of view of the camera for about 16 minutes before the truck comes into view and Lily is seen walking quickly along the road on the driver’s side.
“The defendant is driving the truck as if he was nudging or pushing her along the road,” prosecution counsel Rachel Brand KC told the court. “Lily started running, the vehicle is pursuing her at a low speed but, nevertheless, we say he was clearly using that large, heavy vehicle as a weapon.”
A large bang is then heard off camera, which the prosecution said was the truck striking the lamppost on Old Park Lane in Oldbury. The killer crushed his girlfriend during the horrific rampage. A pathologist found the teen had suffered injuries predominantly to her right side while in an upright position, including a broken upper arm, fractured ribs, a laceration to her liver and traumatic injuries to her chest, which caused “severe bleeding” and ultimately led to her death.
Within minutes of Lily being fatally injured, Azim lied about what happened, solely focused on covering he tracks. The killer picked Lily’s lifeless body up and put her in his van while dialling 999 and claiming he had seen her being hit by a vehicle that did not stop at the scene.
He stopped the truck in a nearby street and put Lily on the pavement before the emergency services arrived. He was seen on body camera footage telling emergency crews he had chased after the car he claimed hit Lily as she was crossing the road. Azim was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder after appearing “agitated”. He later told detectives that he had no memory of what had happened.
Azim’s selfish lies continued in court. The killer admitted to lying about the hit-and-run, saying he panicked, but then claimed that he hit Lily accidentally with his van as he tried to leave after dropping her off near her flat.
He said Lily did not want to be alone or go home, instead pleading with the defendant to go back to his house despite his refusals because he was tired and had work early the next morning.
But harrowing video footage shows Azim was intent on ramming into his teen girlfriend with his van. Det Insp Nigel Box said: “He could have stopped, he could have gone the other way if he were trying to get away from Lily, but he chose to drive his vehicle directly at her.”
Box said that at the scene of the attack, Azim said: “I can’t believe this has happened to me”, and during his trial he explained what a profound impact the crime had on him. “Mohammed Azim cares about himself,” Box said.
According to friends and family, Lily recognised that her relationship with Azim “wasn’t healthy” and told them of verbal and physical abuse. Azim was “not happy” that she was pregnant with another man’s child so she would hide her bump with long clothing when she visited or stayed with him.
Libby Higgs, a friend of the victim, told the court: “She told me he used to say vile things to her, he used to punch her and do things to her like that and at points it would mark her arms.”
“She asked him why he did that and he said it was play fighting. She said to me ‘it’s not play fighting because he’s marking me and I’ve got bruises on my arms’.
“She had to wear jackets to hide them,” Higgs said, adding that Whitehouse covered the bruises “because she didn’t want people seeing”.
“She knew the relationship she was in wasn’t a healthy one and she knew she had to leave him, but she didn’t know what it was, she couldn’t leave him.”
Recalling Lily’s mindset after she became a mum, Higgs said: “She said when [the baby] was discharged she was going to leave H [Azim], because she knew she couldn’t remain in a relationship with him because of social services.”
Azim denied ever assaulting Lily and said she would text him asking if he was with another woman for “attention”. He claimed: “She send messages that are not true to get my attention. I got to know her background, I had a similar childhood to her. I wanted to help her and be there for her.
The killer told court that Lily relied on him for support and did not have many friends, so she would text and call him often while he was working. He said: “When I was working she was messaging me, if I can’t reply to it or I’m doing something, I got a recovery truck and I do the cars and that, sometimes I have gloves on my hands and can’t message her. I could understand, she was lonely, she got close to me and [was] relying on me, she didn’t have any friends.”
The pair had started dating when she was 16 and he was 37. Lily’s aunt, Melissa Wheeler, told jurors that her niece had met Azim after they exchanged numbers in West Bromwich High Street and began an on-off relationship.
Ms Wheeler said that the victim had been “besotted” with Azim but that the pair would fight a lot and the killer would sometimes block Lily’s number when she tried to speak to him.
In a tragic sign of just how toxic the relationship had become, Lily went into labour 10 weeks early after she fell over and cut her hand following an argument with Azim.
“The next day she had pains in her tummy and she said she didn’t want to tell [Azim] because he was asleep and I said ‘you need to call the hospital because you might be in early labour,'” Ms Wheeler said.
A jury returned their verdict by a majority of 10 to two on Friday after less than six hours of deliberation. Members of Lily’s family in the public gallery sobbed as the verdict was returned.
Passing sentence at Wolverhampton Crown Court today, Judge Mr Justice Murray said: “Your decision to kill Lily was spontaneous, but you would have been aware she had a five-week-old baby still in hospital. The baby has lost her mother forever at the very beginning of her life.
“Although Lily was not particularly vulnerable… she was a psychologically vulnerable young woman given her troubled background. She was very needy and dependent on you as you well knew.”
He added: “It must have been apparent at the moment you drove your heavy truck at her, there was a substantial risk you could kill her by doing so. I cannot be sure you formed an intention to kill Lily when you hit her with your truck. I sentence on a basis that your intention was to cause her really serious harm.”
The judge said it was clear from reading messages between Azim and Lily that the victim was “strongly attached to you and to a degree, volatile and extremely needy”.
He said: “I am satisfied that while much of the time you were supportive and kind, largely because you wanted to continue a sexual relationship with Lily, you were at times aggressive. It is clear the relationship was very much on your terms, which is not surprising given you were a much older man with more life experience.”
The killer kept his head down and wiped tears in the dock as Lily’s cousin Katie told the court their world “collapsed” when they were told what had happened.
She said: “Lily died in tragic and horrific circumstances. We find ourselves asking questions that can never be answered – what were her last thoughts and words when her killer crushed her with his truck? These thoughts haunt us daily.”
Lily’s aunt Ms Wheeler said in her statement the pain of losing her niece and best friend was “unbearable”. She said: “You were meant to love her, but you killed her. I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing what you did to Lily.
“I hope you live everyday with the guilt of what you did to Lily. What you did was so far from caring. The way you treated her afterwards is just as painful as how you killed her. She had no dignity and no privacy in those moments.”
Azim came to the UK in 2001 from Pakistan around the age of 14 and went to college and worked in takeaway restaurants to learn English, the trial heard.
He was married in 2007 but had been single and living alone since his marriage ended in 2015. His sentencing hearing was told he had previous convictions for possession of cannabis and evasion of duty on tobacco, as well for an offence of battery in 2012.
Det Insp Nigel Box said: “Sadly in this case Lily’s baby will never know her mother [and] Lily’s family are absolutely devastated.”
“I’m satisfied that my team carried out a thorough and detailed investigation into the circumstances that led to Lily’s death, and this conviction will go some way to securing justice for Lily, and hopefully, at times, some peace for her family.”
For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.
