LONDON: An Iraqi-born man has had his leg amputated and remains in a critical condition following a car crash that left one woman dead and two others injured in London.
Rida Al-Mousawi, a 24-year-old jeweler, was reportedly driving his new supercharged Range Rover at around 120 mph when it left the A40 Western Avenue road at 3:48 a.m. Monday, damaging a Tesla charging station, hitting another parked car, and landing on the rail tracks of Park Royal Underground Station.
A mother of a six-year-old child, who was riding with Al-Mousawi, died at the scene, while another female passenger and a 56-year-old man in the parked Tesla car were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Footage of the incident was captured on a dashcam by an Uber driver using the charging station.
Basra-born Al-Mousawi, known to his friends as Kazim, who ran the Hiba Jewellery store on Edgware Road owned by his father, Mahdi, had been returning home from a night out at a shisha restaurant in the area called Wish Lounge, popular with the local Iraqi community, where he had met the two women. Friends said he had offered the pair lifts home in the early hours.
A fellow Edgware Road shopkeeper told Mail Online: “He had only recently bought the Range Rover, trading in his Mercedes. The car was the most powerful version, the SVR.
“He is a great guy and we all knew him as he had quite an active social life.”
Another shopkeeper said: “It is just terrible, and we knew something was wrong when he did not come to open the store.
“We heard he was involved in the crash and in a very bad way. We are all hoping he survives as he is such a nice young man.”
Another added: “When you look at the photos of the car it is a miracle that he is alive.”
Uber driver Nawaf Ali, 40, whose camera filmed part of the incident, told Mail Online: “I had just parked up and went across to a white Tesla as I recognized the driver as someone who was also an Uber driver.”
He continued: “Suddenly there was a noise like an aircraft crashing. It was so loud. I ducked my head down and this car came flying over the metal barrier. The noise was incredible, but then it was silent.
“I looked around but could not see where the other car went. There was just silence. At the time I had no idea where it had ended up.”
Ali added: “There was a lot of debris all over the place. I was walking around, then I saw the body of the young woman. It was awful. I did not see her at first and wasn’t sure it was a body. It was only when I got closer that I could make her out.
“When I saw that I just ran back to my car. It was too much. I could not stand to look at it. It was like a horror movie, but only much worse. I do not want to see anything like that ever again.”
Local residents were alerted to the crash by the noise made as the car careered out of control.
Nader Nemer, 34, who lives nearby, told the MyLondon news site: “We were sleeping when we heard lots of fire engines and helicopters. My wife woke me up but I couldn’t see what happened.
“Thank God we weren’t there this morning, it could have been so much worse. My wife has told me to never take our son there again. It’s honestly very scary.
A section of the road, and the station, remain closed as investigations and clearance work continue.
In a statement, London’s Metropolitan Police said: “Police were called to a collision on the A40 westbound near Park Royal Underground Station at 03:48 hrs on Monday, Aug. 22.
“Officers attended along with ambulance colleagues. It was reported that two cars, a Range Rover and a Tesla, had been involved in a collision and the Range Rover had left the road and gone onto the railway line. It is believed that the Tesla was stationary at the time.
“Despite the efforts of emergency services, a woman aged in her 20s — believed to have been a passenger in the Range Rover — died at the scene. Officers await formal identification and confirmation that next of kin have been informed.
“The Ranger Rover driver, a man in his 20s, has been taken to hospital where his condition is critical. The condition of a second Range Rover passenger, a woman in her 20s, is not life-threatening. A man, aged in his 50s, who is believed to have been with the stationary Tesla, was treated for injuries that have been assessed as non life-threatening.”
