An unlicensed Pakistani driver who ran over a Perth schoolgirl and left her bleeding in the street has been jailed for just eight months after backflipping on a claim she was intellectually disabled.
Tahira Shaheen, 52, drove into Alexis Lloyd, 12, at a pedestrian crossing outside Willetton Senior High School in June 2023, leaving her with a broken collarbone and needing multiple surgeries on a severe leg fracture, and stuck in a wheelchair for months.
Shaheen didn’t stop to help, and hid from police for months after persuading her husband and son, who spotted the damage to her car amid news reports about the hit-and-run and mentioned the collision, not to turn her in, The West Australian reported.
District Court of WA Judge Laura Christian noted that Shaheen then made conflicting claims after being tracked down, at one point telling officers she knew she had hit someone but was embarrassed because her child went to the school, and then saying she thought she had run over a “large musical instrument”.
In April Shaheen infuriated the victim’s family by delaying sentencing by producing a last-minute psychological report stating she had the verbal abilities of a 10-year-old and the non-verbal skills of a six-year-old, but on Thursday her lawyer said that claim would not be pressed.
Defence counsel Shash Nigam told the court his client was remorseful, accepted wrongdoing, and “did not know what to do” because she was a homemaker who was totally dependent on her husband and had been “very much protected from having to deal with things in the world”.
But Judge Christian found Shaheen had made a “conscious and considered decision” not to report the collision, and told her: “You were attempting to minimise your conduct in the hope of it being to your advantage.”
She noted the victim’s severe injuries, and sentenced Shaheen to 16 months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of eight months, with her licence – which she managed to gain while on parole – to be suspended for two years after her release.
Alexis’s mother Tory Carter told 7News outside court “the only thing [Shaheen] was sorry about was getting caught”, and said her daughter was still suffering from her leg injury more than two years on.
“I think it will be a very long time before that goes away,” she said.
Header image: Left, Shaheen arriving at court. Right, Alexis in hospital (7News).
