Taxi driver sentenced to two years on charges of running over a man in Dubai

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced a taxi driver to two years in jail on charges of deliberately running over a man while the latter was crossing a street in Al Satwa, causing him a permanent disability estimated at 100 per cent, before running away in his car.

The case dates back to February 2020 when an Asian filed a complaint in which he stated that his friend had been run over by a taxi driver in the Satwa area in Dubai.

According to the testimony of the witness in the investigations, while he was walking with his friend near their residence after midnight, a taxi driver passed by the same place with the volume of his car radio very high. When the victim asked him to lower the volume, the driver stopped his car and waited for the victim to try to cross the street before he moved back and then forward, ran over him and fled away.

The victim stated in the investigations that a taxi driver deliberately hit him and caused him to fall five meters away and to be seriously injured. He was taken by ambulance to Rashid Hospital for medical treatment.

A policeman stated in the investigations that he went to the venue of a report received by the operating room stating that an Asian was run over in the Satwa area. After collecting inferences, the police reached a person who was accompanying the driver during the accident. The driver was later arrested.

On interrogation, the driver denied the charge levelled against him, pleading that he was driving his vehicle on a side street in Satwa area with his friend when three people were walking in the area. He used the high lights and the car horn to warn them but this did not appeal to them, he added, noting that when he stopped the car for his friend to get out of the car, the three people came to him and inquired about why he did so.

As he answered that he did so to warn them to get out of the way, they climbed over the hood of the vehicle and refused to get down, he said.

To clear the way, he had to move the vehicle and as such the three people fell from above the engine cover on the side of the car, added. He headed to his residence, denying that he had run over the victim.

According to the forensic doctor’s report, the victim sustained a comminuted skull fracture, brain hemorrhage and traumatic brain clotting. This resulted in slow movements, difficulty in communication, weakness in the limbs and impaired hearing and vision, all of which are considered a permanent disability estimated at 100 per cent.