Chris Marriott Sheffield murder trial: Second good samaritan feared car would 'reverse over' her, jury told

A woman injured when a car was driven into a crowd of people in Sheffield has told the jury in a murder trial that she felt like the vehicle was being driven ‘straight at us’ and feared it would be ‘reversed’ over them after impact.

Chris Marriott, aged 46, was hit, and killed, by a car as he stopped to assist a woman who was unconscious in the street, while a disturbance was ongoing on College Close, Burngreave, Sheffield, on December 27, 2023. 

Five others - Hasan Khan, Riasat Khan, Ambreen Jhangur, Nafeesa Jhangur and passing midwife Alison Norris - who also stopped to help the injured woman - were also injured during the course of the same incident. 

24-year-old Hassan Jhangur went on trial at Sheffield Crown Court today (June 18, 2024), accused of Mr Marriott’s murder. He is also alleged to have committed a number of other offences including attempted murder, grievous bodily harm with intent and wounding with intent, relating to the five others injured during the course of the same incident, all of which he denies.

Ms Norris suffered a fracture to her right fibula after being hit by a blue Seat Ibiza being driven by Hassan Jhangur. The charge faced by Hassan Jhangur, of Whiteways Road, Grimesthorpe, Sheffield, in relation to Ms Norris is one of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Giving evidence this afternoon, Ms Norris told the jury of six men and six women that after suffering the injury, her ‘interpretation’ of the events that caused it was that the vehicle had been ‘driven intentionally’ into her and the others injured. She said she believed the car was being driven ‘straight at us’.

“I was terrified the car was going to reverse back over us, or over me, so I crawled onto a grassy area,” said Ms Norris.  

Explaining what had caused her to form that opinion, Ms Norris continued: “I think because there was no change of speed and no change in the direction of the wheels.”

Ms Norris was knelt down at the time of the collision, after getting into that position in order to assist the unconscious woman.

She estimated there was ‘about two seconds’ from ‘seeing’ the vehicle to it ‘being on us’. 

“I was looking straight at the car at that point, and the wheels were not turning,” Ms Norris said, adding that she believed she was ‘parallel’ to the ‘central markings’ on the road at the time.  

She continued: “Somehow I forced myself out of the way, I didn’t even have time to cry out a warning. I just somehow moved, I still don’t know how I did that.”

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“I got smacked, a blow, and I was flying through the air backwards.”

Prosecutor, Tom Storey KC, asked Ms Norris where ‘the blow’ hit her. 

She replied: “I felt like behind me, but it was all of my right side that was bruised so it must have been my right. I must have twisted, but I don’t remember. All of my injuries were on my right side.”

Ms Norris detailed how she had been out with a group, which included her partner and children, when one of their number noticed someone lying in the road when they were about 700 or 800 yards away. 

“I thought, at first, that it might be a bundle of clothes in the road, and then I realised that it was a person,” Ms Norris said, adding that her subsequent impression was that there was a ‘woman collapsed in the road’. 

She told the jury that she is a direct entry midwife, as well as a midwifery educator, as part of which she teaches ‘basic life support’. 

“And so I thought I could offer that if needed,” Ms Norris said, before explaining that upon closer inspection she found the collapsed woman to be ‘unconscious but breathing’. 

Opening the prosecution case to the jury this morning, Mr Storey said Mr Marriott had also stopped at the scene with the intention of assisting the woman laid in the street, who he identified as being Hassan Jhangur’s sister, Nafeesa.

Ms Norris said that the man also assisting at the scene, who was also knelt down, had informed her that the woman was ‘breathing’ and ‘had a pulse’. 

Ms Norris said a man tapped her on the shoulder, and said something like: ‘Alison knows me, she knows I wouldn’t come here to start an argument’ in reference to a conversation ‘an older Asian woman’ at the scene was having with him.

Ms Norris said the woman was intermittently on the phone while she was there; and although she could not recall what the woman was saying, or if she was speaking in English, she assumed - from her tone of voice - that she was in an ‘agitated’ state. 

“She said [to him]: ‘You need to go’...I looked at him and said something like: ‘You need to go’ because I didn’t want to waste any more attention on him,” Ms Norris said, adding that her priority was to ‘assess’ the unconscious woman because she had not yet had that opportunity. 

Following the fatal collision, in which Mr Marriott was killed, Hassan Jhangur is alleged to have got out of the vehicle he was driving ‘as soon as it halted’ in the front garden of a nearby property and proceeded to stab his new brother-in-law, Hasan Khan, multiple times.

Mr Storey said the incident took place hours after Mr Jhangur’s sister, Amaani, married Hasan Khan. 

He told the jury that ‘catalyst’ for it appears to have been the Jhangur family being ‘disapproving’ of the union between the pair, and the subsequent arrival of Nafeesa Jhangur and Ambreen Jhangur - Hassan Jhangur’s mother and sister, respectively - at the Khan family home shortly after wedding celebrations had got underway.

An argument subsequently broke out between members of the Khan and Jhangur families, during which Nafeesa Jhangur ‘fell to the ground’ and was seemingly rendered unconscious, Mr Storey said.

Hassan Jhangur’s father, Mohammed Jhangur, has gone on trial alongside him, accused of one count of perverting the course of justice, which he denies. 

Mr Storey said it is the Crown’s case that in the moments after Hassan Jhangur allegedly stabbed Hasan Khan, Mohammed Jhangur, aged 56, took the weapon his son had ‘wielded’ and ‘placed it out of sight in his locked car’. 

“The clear inference is that he did so intending to thwart or hamper the inevitable police investigation, by concealing a key piece of evidence which – so far as he knew – might have had very damaging consequences for his own son and the extent of his involvement in what had occurred at College Close,” Mr Storey said.

Moving to the Crown’s case against Hassan Jhangur, Mr Storey continued: “Hassan Jhangur unlawfully killed Chris Marriott, using his vehicle as a weapon, at a time when he intended to cause at least very serious harm; he also caused very serious harm to four other people, again at a time when he intended that consequence, namely to cause really serious harm.

“And Hassan Jhangur then stabbed Hasan Khan in circumstances which make clear that he intended to kill him.”

Hassan Jhangur has previously pleaded guilty to causing Mr Marriott’s death by dangerous driving, and causing serious injury by dangerous driving to the others hit by his vehicle. 

He denies Mr Marriott’s murder, however, as well as the alternative count of manslaughter. Hassan Jhangur has also entered not guilty pleas to one count of attempted murder, relating to the alleged stabbing of Hasan Khan, four counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and two counts of wounding.

Mohammed Jhangur, also of Whiteways Road, Grimesthorpe, Sheffield, denies one count of perverting the course of justice. 

The trial, which is expected to last five weeks, continues.