A recovery driver who used his truck as a weapon to crush his teenage girlfriend has been jailed for life for murder.

Mohammed Azim, 41, was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years in jail for killing new mother Lily Whitehouse, 19, on Bonfire Night last year.

He had picked her up to take her home after she had visited her baby daughter in hospital but they argued and she got out of his Mercedes Sprinter flatbed van. 

CCTV showed Azim then nudging Lily along the road with the vehicle before a loud bang could be heard.

Miss Whitehouse, who was just 5ft 3ins and weighed less than seven and a half stone, suffered severe chest injuries after she was crushed against a lamppost and died on the pavement in the market town of Oldbury, West Midlands on November 5 last year.

Azim then picked her up, put her in his truck and drove around the corner before calling emergency services. He then lied to police, claiming she had been a victim of a hit and run. 

The court heard Azim, who is originally from Pakistan, is divorced and has a previous conviction for domestic violence against his ex wife.

He met Miss Whitehouse, who wanted to become a nurse, when she had just turned 17 and he was 38. 

He denied murder but was found guilty following a trial. 

Jailing him at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Monday, judge Mr Justice Edward Murray told him Miss Whitehouse's baby 'has lost her mother for ever' after he used his 'heavy truck to kill Lily'.

The judge said he was jailing him on the basis that it was a 'spontaneous decision' but added: 'It must have been apparent even in the moment that there was a substantial risk you could kill her.'

He said the relationship was 'very much on your terms' which was not surprising given the age difference. 

The judge said that while Azim he could be supportive to  Miss Whitehouse who was 'vulnerable' and 'needy' he was also aggressive and grabbed her and called her a 'dumb b****' when she struggled to breast feed her baby.

Ms Whitehouse had just five weeks earlier given birth to her baby daughter, fathered by another man.

Her baby was in the neo natal unit at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, having been born 10 weeks premature, when she was killed. 

The court was told she had a difficult childhood, and was reliant on Azim who she was 'besotted with'.  

The pair met when he was in a car with friends parked up on the high street in West Bromwich while Miss Whitehousewas with her aunt, Melissa Wheeler. They exchanged numbers and their relationship became sexual just a few months later.

By this time Miss Whitehouse had moved out of her father Jamie's home and was living in supported accommodation.

Her mother - who is said to suffer from serious mental health problems and is facing trial herself later this year for robbery - had left when she was three.

The court heard Miss Whitehouse's main support was her paternal grandmother Tracy Whitehouse but when she died in Spring 2023 aged 53 she was left 'feeling very alone'.

Azim had come to the UK from Pakistan as a 14-year-old in 2001 to join his parents who were already here.

He had married in 2007 and had children but that ended in divorce in 2015.

Rachel Brand KC for the prosecution, said Miss Whitehouse had 'little face to face contract with her family and did not have a circle of close friends'.

She said Azim knew this and knew she had become dependent on him.

Ms Brand said: 'He knew full well that Lily had just given birth to an infant daughter who was still in hospital at the time of this incident.'

In a victim impact statement Katie Whitehouse, Lily's cousin, said she was a 'thriving 19 year old with her whole life ahead of her'. 

'Every day we are tortured by thoughts of her final moments,' she told the court.

'Her killer chose a moment when she was alone in the dark and vulnerable. We ask ourselves why Lily? Why was she denied the future she deserved?'

Ms Whitehouse said Lily's life was 'full of promise' adding: 'She was a mother with dreams and goals. The future she was working towards has been taken away.'

But she said the most heartbreaking consequence of Lily's death was 'the child she has left behind'.

'She will grow up knowing that her mother never came home,' she said.

Describing the day they cleared out Lily's flat after her death Ms Whitehouse told how they found a 'single cup and a plate left in the sink her bed was perfectly made'.

They were, she said, 'unbearable reminders that she expected to come home but she never did'.

Addressing Azim directly she said: 'You moved her body, you didn't help her. Was she alive when you picked her up and drove off? It sickens me to know that your hands were the last to touch her.

'She was loved beyond measure she deserved safety and happiness to grow into the future that was stolen from her.'

Her aunt Melissa Wheeler said in a statement read to the court: 'People say you learn to live with a loss but it has been months and I am still struggling.

'I can't remember the last time I laughed I can't understand how this was done by someone who was meant to love her. She had her whole life ahead of her.'

Speaking about the impact on her daughter she said: 'I worry how that will effect her daughter as she grows up. One day she will have to know what you did to her. You were meant to love her but you killed her. I hope you understand the damage your actions did on that night.

No sentence that you will receive will bring her back. I hope you live every day with the guilt with what you did to Lily. The way you treated her afterwards was just as painful.

'Your actions were not the actions of someone who cared for her. She had no dignity and no privacy in those moments.'