🚨 Two Cars Began Racing At 89mph—Then A Mother And Her Four-Year-Old Daughter Never Made It To Nursery In A Heartbreaking School-Run Horror
Tragedy on the School Run: How a Deadly Race Claimed a Mother and Her Little Girl
The morning should have been ordinary. Justyna Hulboj, 27, held her four-year-old daughter Lena Czepczor’s small hand as they made their way along the pavement on Scott Hall Road in Leeds. It was around 8.30am on a weekday in June 2023. Nursery waited at the end of the short walk. The air carried the familiar sounds of the school-run rush: engines, distant chatter, the occasional impatient horn. Neither mother nor child could have known that two men in powerful cars were treating the 40mph road as their private racetrack.
What followed was catastrophic. An Audi TT, driven by Hardeep Bachu, hit the kerb, lost control and mounted the pavement. The car struck Justyna and Lena with devastating force. Both were killed. The white sports car’s impact ended a young life barely begun and robbed a family of a devoted mother in seconds.
Bachu later pleaded guilty to causing their deaths by dangerous driving. His alleged partner in the fatal contest, 37-year-old Jasskamal Riyat, is now on trial at Leeds Crown Court. Riyat denies the same charges. Prosecutors say the two men, strangers to each other, had been “egging each other on” during the morning rush hour, turning ordinary traffic into a high-stakes competition that left two innocent pedestrians dead.
Prosecutor Carmel Pearson painted a clear picture for the jury. The driving was competitive and aggressive. Riyat, behind the wheel of a BMW 1 Series, pulled up alongside Bachu at a set of traffic lights. Witnesses described the pair weaving between other vehicles, surging forward at speeds far beyond the limit. Although Riyat’s exact speed was not recorded, he was “right behind” Bachu when the Audi was measured travelling at 89mph just 60 metres from the point of collision. On a road where the maximum legal speed is 40mph, that figure alone signals the scale of the risk being taken.
There was more. Riyat was allegedly holding his phone and recording Bachu as the Audi pulled away from the lights. “Watch this guy let it off,” he is said to have declared. Footage later recovered showed the two men communicating through their open windows while waiting at traffic lights, appearing to congratulate each other on the power of their cars. The exchange was not the casual banter of fellow motorists. It was the language of a race already underway.
Justyna and Lena were walking along the pavement when the Audi struck the kerb and spun out of control. The car mounted the pavement and hit them. In the moments that followed, Riyat did not stop. He continued filming the crashed vehicle as he drove past, then left the scene and went to work. The prosecution is clear on this point: the fact that Riyat’s own car did not collide with the victims does not absolve him. “Just because he did not crash, this does not mean he escapes responsibility for these deaths,” Pearson told the court. “He was also driving dangerously on that road. It’s the prosecution’s case that they both drove dangerously at speeds that outstripped other road users, weaving in and out of traffic close to each other and other cars. Neither driver showed regard to other road users and those more vulnerable – pedestrians. They were racing and competitive.”
Pearson went further. This was not simply an unspeakable tragedy, she said. It was an entirely foreseeable event. Two men choosing to race on a busy urban road during the school-run hour created the exact conditions for disaster. Pedestrians on the pavement, especially a mother and young child, had no defence against a vehicle travelling at nearly 90mph that suddenly left the carriageway.
The court has heard how the men’s behaviour stood out even among the usual morning traffic. Other drivers noticed the weaving, the sudden accelerations, the way the Audi and BMW stayed close to each other as if locked in a contest. On a road designed for steady 40mph travel, such conduct transformed a routine journey into something far more dangerous. The speed measurement of 89mph so close to the collision site underlines how little margin for error remained. When the Audi hit the kerb, physics took over. Control was lost. The pavement became the impact zone.
For the family of Justyna and Lena, the loss is permanent and profound. A four-year-old girl who should have been settling into her nursery day never arrived. A 27-year-old mother who was simply doing what countless parents do every morning – walking her child to education – was killed on the same short stretch of pavement. The ordinariness of their destination makes the violence of the crash even harder to absorb. Nursery bags, small footsteps, a mother’s careful pace: all of it ended by two cars competing for supremacy on a public road.
Riyat’s decision to keep filming after the Audi crashed and then continue to his workplace has drawn particular attention in court. Prosecutors argue it demonstrates a mindset that prioritised the race and its documentation over any immediate concern for the people who had just been struck. The footage of the crashed car, captured while he drove past, forms part of the evidence the jury will consider as they decide whether his driving crossed the line into dangerous conduct that contributed to the deaths.
The trial continues. Bachu’s guilty plea has already established that the Audi driver’s actions caused the deaths. The remaining question for the jury is whether Riyat shares criminal responsibility through his own dangerous driving and the competitive dynamic the two men created. Pearson’s closing description of the morning as one in which neither man showed regard for other road users or vulnerable pedestrians sets the terms of that decision.
Scott Hall Road is no remote stretch of dual carriageway. It is a route used by families, workers and schoolchildren every day. The 40mph limit exists for a reason. When drivers treat it as a stage for racing, the consequences can be irreversible. Justyna Hulboj and Lena Czepczor paid the ultimate price for a contest they never entered and could never have anticipated.
The images that have emerged from the case – the young mother and her daughter on the pavement, the powerful cars at the lights, the phone held up to record a rival’s acceleration – form a stark sequence. A school-run walk that should have ended with a child settled into nursery instead ended in a court room where the language of dangerous driving, competitive racing and foreseeable tragedy is being tested against the evidence. Two lives were extinguished in moments. The legal process now seeks to determine the full measure of responsibility for that loss.
What remains is the simple, unbearable fact at the centre of the case. A mother and her four-year-old daughter were walking to nursery on a Leeds pavement. Two drivers were racing. One car left the road. Neither Justyna nor Lena survived. The jury at Leeds Crown Court must now decide whether the man who filmed the aftermath and drove on to work bears criminal liability for the deaths of a woman and the little girl whose hand she held that morning.
