Mum crushed by her own car with baby inside after failing to put handbrake on

A young mother was crushed to death under her own car after she failed to set the handbrakes properly, an inquest heard today.

Sameha Mahmood, 25, was killed on the steep driveway of her parents’ home when her BMW, which still had her daughter inside, rolled over her. 

Sameha had driven her car to her parents' house to pick up her mother, Zahida Akhtar, for a birthday celebration at her aunt’s home. She phoned her mother at around 8.20pm to tell her she was waiting outside. However when Mrs Akhtar went outside three minutes later, all she could see was her daughter’s shoes strewn on the driveway and her car at the bottom of the drive in Whitelands Road, High Wycombe, England.

Mrs Akhtar said: "It was strange, like she was trying to run and was leaving her shoes behind".

Mrs Akhtar shouted out her daughter’s name but it was not until a passer-by suggested looking underneath the car that she discovered she had been crushed. 

She said: "When I looked down I was shocked. I saw her on one side and I started screaming for help. I could see she was not breathing."

The inquest in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, heard that Mrs Akhtar’s son, Mohammed Usman Mahmood, was inside the house in his bedroom at the time. He described how he heard a thud "like someone was dropping a wheelie bin" and then someone screaming for two to three seconds. When he went outside he saw his mother repeatedly screaming at a man, saying "save my daughter" and "get her out from under the car".

His statement said: "I could see my sister’s baby in the child seat in the rear of the BMW and my mother was just screaming and screaming. I gave the baby to my mum and told her to take her inside."

The inquest was told that around 15 to 20 neighbours rushed outside their homes and used car jacks and bricks to try to lift the car off Sameha. Mohammed described to the coroner how he opened the driver’s door and pulled the handbrake up after finding it had not been applied. 

Emergency services arrived at the scene in Whitelands Road soon after and freed Sahema from underneath the car. However, paramedics were unable to perform CPR as her chest cavity was crushed and she was pronounced dead at the scene at about 8.50pm on December 23.

A post-mortem examination found Sahema had broken her ribs and pelvis, as well as rupturing her spleen.