Sydney woman used car to kill ex after finding him with another woman, jury told
Minutes after being discovered in his underwear with another woman, a Sydney man was killed when a furious ex-partner hit him with her car, a jury has heard.
As her murder trial opened on Tuesday, Jackline Sabana Bona Musa has been accused of deliberately driving her black Toyota Kluger into Payman Thagipur on June 27, 2020, with an intent to either kill or cause very serious injury.
Prosecutor Emma Blizard said Musa was angry about finding Thagipur with another woman in his home and had then driven at him in the car park of his Wentworth Point apartment block, fatally pinning him to the wall.
“It is the Crown case that in this state of anger she drove her car out of the parking spot very quickly, that she drove her car at the deceased deliberately as he walked towards her through the car park,” Blizard said.
The NSW Supreme Court jury heard Musa and Thagipur met online and had been seeing each other since late 2019. By June 2020, Musa considered him her boyfriend.
The last time the couple met in person was June 21, 2020. After this, Musa sent a number of text messages to her then-partner, none of which he responded to.
“Hi, how are you? Am concerned and worried. I just wanted to know that you’re not hurt or sick. If there’s something I did wrong, I would like to apologise. Please get in touch,” she wrote on the afternoon of June 27.
This message was ignored.
That night, after failing to find Thagipur at a Granville shisha bar he was known to frequent, Musa sought him out at his apartment, the jury heard.
Arriving at 8.13pm, she attempted to gain entrance to the building without initial success. She then tailgated another vehicle, waiting until the roller door was raised before she drove into the car park.
On her way in, the roller door impacted the top of her Toyota, damaging both her roof rack and the door itself which no longer opened and closed as normal.
After being let in through another security door by a resident who had come out to examine the broken roller door, Musa then knocked on the door of Thagipur’s apartment to find he was not alone.
“Is it your turn today?” she is alleged to have said to the other woman inside.
She is then claimed to have spat in Thagipur’s face before saying, “Is this what you are like?” and leaving.
After he put on some pants and a t-shirt, he walked out to the car park where he was struck by Musa’s vehicle at around 8.30pm.
Musa called triple-zero after the collision, the jury was told.
“The accused told the triple-zero operator that what had happened had been an accident and she said, ‘I was driving out, he come out of nowhere in front of me’,” Blizard said.
No drugs or alcohol were found in her blood after mandatory police testing.
Blizard said Musa’s actions amounted to murder because they were a deliberate attempt to either kill Thagipur or cause really serious injury.
The barrister said that if the jury was not convinced of this, however, they should consider finding Musa guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Defence counsel Madeleine Avenell SC did not dispute that her client had driven her car at Thagipur.
However, she rejected allegations Musa had used her car with murderous intent or in an unlawful manner amounting to manslaughter.
“What is in dispute is that Ms Musa saw Mr Thagipur before colliding with him, that she deliberately drove at him as he walked through the car park and that she intended to cause him grievous bodily harm or intended to kill him,” Avenell said.
“She denies that the circumstances were such as to amount to an unlawful and dangerous act of manslaughter.”
The trial with Justice Richard Button continues.
