Taxi driver Majid Rehman is found guilty of mowing down eight people A taxi driver has been found guilty of deliberately knocking down eight people in Cardiff city centre.
It took a jury less than two hours to unanimously convict Majid Rehman, who now faces a lengthy prison sentence.
He had denied the charges, which included wounding, attempting to wound and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.
Eyewitnesses saw his car mount the pavement in busy Wood Street, outside the central train and bus station, at around 6.30pm on March 27.
They described seeing the victims, who included a group of rail workers, ending a shift and wearing bright orange uniforms, being thrown in the air or collapsing onto the ground as the taxi hit them.
Gym user Colin Richards, looking out from a window above the scene as he jogged on a treadmill, described feeling physically sick as he saw others trying to move the car to rescue one man who was underneath it.
The 30-year-old cabbie, from North Clive Street, Grangetown, denied deliberately deciding to drive on to the pavement in what prosecutor Claire Wilks called an act of revenge following a dispute with some of the men minutes earlier.
Rehman said some of the group had targeted him as he sat in the station’s taxi rank, because he had given evidence against one of them in court three years earlier.
He said he was verbally abused, punched to the ground and threatened that he and his brother would be killed.
As the group walked off, he turned his seven-seater people carrier and was intending to go and warn his brother.
He told the court he could not remember driving onto the pavement as he approached the men but he had said to police at the scene: “No one drives at people for nothing. They assaulted me. It was self defence.”
Later at the police station, when he himself had been treated in hospital for injuries he suffered after being pulled from his cab as it came to a stop, he said: “Look at my face. This all happened because of the court, because I was a witness against one of those guys.
“I didn’t want to go to court but the police made me.”
Rehman, who came to Cardiff from Pakistan as a 14-year-old, will remain in custody until sentence is passed on him by Judge Philip Richards at the end of the month.
Read more: Wales Online
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... z2CTALnFM2
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