Woman shot outside police station ‘unlawfully killed’
A woman who was shot dead outside a police station 21 years ago was unlawfully killed, a jury has concluded. Sabina Rizvi was 25 when she was shot and killed by unidentified assailants in March 2003 outside Bexleyheath police station in south-east London. An inquest into Ms Rizvi's death at the Old Bailey has been looking into whether officers at Bexleyheath police station knew that a gangland feud posed a risk to Sabina's life. The coroner today concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support that. Report by Jonesia. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 A woman who was shot dead outside a police station 21 years ago was unlawfully killed,
00:06 a jury has concluded. Sabina Rizvi was 25 when she was shot and killed by unidentified
00:13 assailants in March 2003 outside Bexleyheath police station in south-east London.
00:20 In 2004, Paul Ashbery was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder, and the attempted
00:26 murder of her boyfriend Mark Williams, who was a passenger in the same car.
00:31 An inquest into Ms Rizvi's death at the Old Bailey has been looking into whether officers
00:36 at Bexleyheath police station knew that a gangland feud posed a risk to Sabina's life.
00:43 The coroner today concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support that. Ashbery,
00:48 a known thief and burglar, accepted responsibility for Ms Rizvi's murder while giving evidence
00:54 at the inquest, but refused to name the two people who fired the shots.
00:59 The jury was told there was no evidence that officers had inadvertently notified Ashbery
01:04 of Williams' whereabouts, and that Ashbery already knew he was at the station.
01:09 After waiting for 21 years since Sabina's murder for an inquest to provide some answers
01:16 about what really happened on the night she died, we are hugely disappointed that the
01:20 coroner has prevented the jury from returning any conclusion on the facts.
01:26 The jury heard evidence about the serious risk that Paul Ashbery and his associates
01:30 posed and the intelligence that the police held about this. The Rizvi family strongly
01:36 believe that the police could and should have put in place measures to protect Sabina, and
01:41 if they did, she would not have died.
01:43 It is a dissatisfying end to the inquest for the Rizvi family, who fought so hard and for
01:49 so long for an inquiry.
01:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]