A
teenager killed herself by deliberately walking onto a motorway after
being dumped by her “controlling” boyfriend, an inquest heard.
Lena Begum, 18, died of multiple serious after being hit by a van on the M65, in Lancashire in April last year. One
of the dental student’s friends told Burnley Coroner’s Court she was
“mentally obsessed” with Quzlam Ahmed, who she met in hospital, despite
his “history of violence”.
Lena been treated for self-harming after carving his nickname, Kammy, into her arm.
The
troubled teen was struck while crossing the eastbound slip-road towards
Gannow, at junction 10, at around 3.50am on April 10 last year.
A
post-mortem examination showed Lena, from Brierfield, in Lancashire,
died “rapidly” from multiple serious injuries including fractures to her
neck, skull, spine and ribs.
East Lancashire’s assistant
coroner, Mark Williams, said she was known to police after being
reported missing a number of times and had previously been placed in
local authority care.
She had started a relationship with Mr Ahmed after meeting him at a hospital placement in Bradford in October 2012.
In
January 2013 she was asked to leave the facility following breaches of
rules including drinking and later the same month, she was treated for
self-harming after Mr Ahmed said he no longer wanted to be her
boyfriend.
Giving evidence, Taslema Alom, who was with Lena the
morning of her death, said: “I think she was mentally obsessed with him
(Mr Ahmed).
“She would go and meet him whenever he called. I kept
telling her to stop seeing him. Before she met Kammy she was happy and
fun to be with.
“After she got with him, she changed. It was like
he controlled her. I seen him punch her on one occasion, at the time of
her 18th birthday.”
Miss Alom said Lena had previously mentioned taking her own life.
“I didn’t believe that she would do it,” she said.
The
night before she died, Lena, who was studying as a dental nurse at
Blackburn College, had been at a friend’s house and visited a shisha bar
before asking to be dropped off near the M65 at around 1.30am.
Recalling
the last time she saw her, another friend, Marcia Khan, said:
“Everything was fine. She was normal. She turned around and she smiled.”
Police officers explained that between midnight and her death, 16 calls were made between Lena’s phone and her mother’s.
She
also had two conversations totalling 30 minutes with Mr Ahmed, who was
in Blackburn at the time, and recorded a voicemail message.
PC
Richard Roberts, an accident investigator, said Lena would have been
able to see the Mercedes Sprinter approaching her for “more than 10
seconds” and that there was “no obvious reason for pedestrians to
attempt to cross the road there”.
Asked if street lighting on the
M65 would have allowed the driver to have seen the teenager earlier, PC
Roberts replied: “Potentially, yes.”
Absolving van driver John
Trainor of any blame, he added: “By the time she was illuminated, he (Mr
Trainor) would not have had time to slow down.”
He said that Mr Trainor, who was travelling at 59mph, would have been as close as 35 metres to Lena before he could see her.
Concluding
that Lena had taken her own life, Mr Williams said her relationship
with Mr Ahmed ‘does not appear to have been very good for her
well-being.”
He added: “It is quite clear that before 4am she walked across the path of a Mercedes van driven by Mr Trainor.
“There was nothing Mr Trainor could do.”
DailyMirror
