Speeding car crushes pedestrian against wall

A man waiting by the road for his brother was killed when a car skidded across a pavement and crushed him against a wall. Mohammed Ashraf, 29, had been waiting for his brother to join him for a meal on Monday evening, the first day of the holy month of Ramadan.

He was standing outside a shopping centre when a Toyota Camry skidded onto the sidewalk and crushed him. Witnesses said the driver had been driving very fast and tried to stop when the traffic light turned red.

Ashraf, a salesman for a wholesale company, had been waiting for his older brother Shahul Hameed to meet him. Their uncle V.M.A. Rahman said, "Shahul arrived at the shopping centre about 10 minutes later and saw that there had been an accident.

"He went to find out what had happened and saw a man whose face had been completely crushed, but then he saw the watch, ring and clothes and immediately realised it was Ashraf.

"Within minutes the ambulance arrived to take him to hospital. He called me while they were travelling to the hospital, saying that Ashraf's condition was very bad. He was dead when they reached the hospital.

"Shahul was in shock when I met him. Ashraf had been standing against a wall that was quite far away, it was not even near the pavement." The body was released by Dubai Police on Wednesday night and Shahul has returned with it to India where Ashraf was buried yesterday in his home village of Kakkadapuram in the Kannur district of Kerala.