Ashenafei Demissie, 52, was sitting in his Volkswagen ID.4 in a residential car park when the vehicle surged forward, striking Fareed Amir, five, and Demissie’s own son, Raphael, 12. Fareed died from his injuries, while Raphael suffered serious damage to his leg.
However, a police collision investigator told the Old Bailey that there was no mechanical fault with the car and concluded the driver had pressed the accelerator instead of the brake.
Demissie denies causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving, as well as causing serious injury.
The court heard that Fareed had been walking home from primary school with his mother, Maryam Lemulu, when she stopped to speak to her friend, Yodit Samuel, Demissie’s wife. Raphael was also present.
Demissie offered Fareed a sweet, but his mother refused. Moments later, the Volkswagen accelerated suddenly, hitting both boys before crashing into five parked cars.
Demissie, a minicab driver, told police he had rented the electric vehicle from Addison Lee and had been using it for about two months at the time of the incident in November 2022.
He claimed that after Fareed was denied the sweet, the boy approached the front of the vehicle and touched a sensor. “The car jumped,” Demissie said. “I believe the car jumped because Fareed touched the sensor.”
“I have been driving for 21 years and I have never seen anything like it,” he added.
Demissie said he had parked outside his flat near London Bridge station, pressed the parking button and removed his feet from the pedals before the car accelerated.
“It was something to do with the sensor,” he told police. “It was just like a moment, a second, whoosh and jump. It was not a normal drive.”
The court heard that the Volkswagen ID.4 weighs more than two tonnes, was 11 months old and had travelled just over 19,000 miles.
Data from the vehicle’s event recorder did not capture the collision. The system only permanently stores data when safety equipment such as airbags deploys. In this case, the airbags were not activated and previous records had been overwritten.
Mark Still, a Metropolitan Police forensic collision investigator, told the court he could find no evidence of a fault that would cause the car to move without driver input. He said the vehicle’s parking brake would disengage if the accelerator was pressed.
“I was unable to find any defects that could have contributed to the collision,” he said. “The only way to make the vehicle move was by pressing the accelerator.”
Still concluded that Demissie had pressed the accelerator forcefully, most likely to full power.
He described a recognised phenomenon in which drivers mistakenly press the wrong pedal, believing they are braking when they are in fact accelerating. “They press harder, thinking it will stop,” he said. “It spirals out of control.”
“The evidence supports the view that this was pedal misapplication,” he added.
Demissie broke down in tears as he gave evidence, speaking about Raphael’s lasting injuries and the death of Fareed, whom he said he treated like family.
The trial continues.
