Driver jailed for killing much-loved student in petrol station crash
Fiona Phippen has been jailed for four years and three months
A driver who killed a pedestrian when she careered off the A1 into a service station forecourt, less than a minute after ending a video-call, has been jailed for four years and three months.
Lincoln Crown Court was shown “graphic and shocking” CCTV of Fiona Phippen’s Nissan Qashqai hitting psychology student Urwah Tanveer at up to 51mph, as the 20-year-old stood beside her family’s stationary Mercedes.
Phippen sobbed in the dock at numerous points of her sentencing hearing, including as the court was told how her victim was planning for her graduation ceremony when she was killed.
The 45-year-old mother-of-two, of Church Close in Great Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, pleaded guilty in April to causing both death and serious injury by dangerous driving.
Judge Simon Hirst was told Phippen missed Urwah’s brother by inches and caused multiple fractures to her 83-year-old grandmother, who was sitting inside the Mercedes.
Phippen claimed to have been distracted by another car on the northbound A1 immediately before the accident at Foston Services near Grantham in Lincolnshire amid perfect road conditions on the afternoon of June 29 2024.
Urwah, from London, had been awarded a 2:1 by the city’s Queen Mary University and hoped to work in the NHS, the court heard.
The charity shop volunteer died in hospital a day after the crash, while her grandmother suffered hand, chest and rib injuries.
Evidence presented to the court suggested Phippen was using cruise control and failed to brake in the six seconds after she left the A1, while travelling at a “effectively constant” speed between 41mph and 51mph.
Passing sentence on Phippen, Judge Hirst said it was accepted that a six-minute WhatsApp video call, using a mobile in a holder on the dashboard, had ended 38 seconds before the crash.
After hearing victim impact statements, the judge told Phippen: “Exactly why this collision occurred is still unclear.
“I have heard from Urwah’s parents and sister.
“It is clear from everything I have heard and have read about her that she was much-loved and will be missed for a very long time to come.”
The judge also banned Phippen from driving for seven years and six weeks after telling her: “For over six minutes before the collision you were on the phone in a video-call.
“That ended 38 seconds before the collision.
“It ended 32 seconds before you left the carriageway (off the A1 onto the slip road).
“It is plain to me that you had insufficient awareness of what was going on around you on the A1.”
The father, mother and sister of Ms Tanveer all read victim impact statements describing their grief at her death.
Her mother Nahail Idris, an NHS worker who was in a nearby shop at the time of the crash, held up a picture of her “always smiling” daughter and directly addressed the dock during her statement.
She told the court: “My daughter was killed in front of my eyes.
“Having subsequently seen the video footage I realise how close Phippen came to killing two of my children.
“I now exist with a constant scream within me.
“I will live with this trauma and the loss of my daughter for the rest of my life.
“My life will now always be about what Urwah never got to do.”
Looking towards Phippen in the dock she told her: “This is my life sentence and my family’s life sentence.”