Cocaine-fuelled Sheffield man drove wrong way up M1 and reached speeds of 90mph in bid to evade police

The attention of police constables patrolling the streets of Sheffield in a marked police car in the early hours of January 13, 2022 was drawn to a white KIA Niro driven by defendant, Tahir Razaq, after they noticed he was driving at ‘excessive speed’, prosecuting barrister, Ayman Khokhar, told Sheffield Crown Court.

Mr Khokar said officers began to follow Razaq’s vehicle, and as they did so, carried out a check on Razaq’s vehicle on the ‘police national computer,’ with results suggesting the car may have ‘links to organised crime’.

“A decision was made to stop the vehicle,” said Mr Khokhar, adding that the driver, subsequently identified as Razaq, ‘initially complied with this request’.

However, after one of the officers approached the vehicle and asked Razaq whether he was alone in the vehicle, he drove away at speed. A police chase was then mounted, the court heard.

Summarising Razaq’s poor driving, Judge Graham Reeds KC said: “It involved a high-speed pursuit where you tried to evade the police. It involved you driving the wrong way up the M1. You were on drugs at the time, and the pursuit only came to an end when you rammed a police car and tried to run off.”

In addition to driving the wrong way up the M1 in South Yorkshire, Mr Khokhar said Razaq, aged 42, of Ribston Place, Darnall, also ran several red lights, reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour on roads with a 40mph limit and ‘narrowly avoided a collision with a HGV’.

After ‘ramming’ a police vehicle, Razaq brought his car to a stop and jumped a fence in a bid to escape but he was subsequently caught, and handcuffed, by police.

"While in police custody, the defendant provided a blood sample and tested positive for cocaine, and cocaine breakdown product,” Mr Khokhar told the court.

Mr Khokhar detailed Razaq’s criminal record of 25 convictions spanning 54 offences, six of which were for dangerous driving.

Razaq pleaded guilty to a further dangerous driving offence, as well as another charge of driving a motor vehicle with drugs above the specified limit – relating to the January 2022 incident – at an earlier hearing.

Defending, David Watts, said Razaq has ‘quite substantial personal mitigation,’ including a number of medical issues such as a condition for which he has recently undergone an operation on his bowel, as well as ongoing back problems following a ‘serious accident’.

“He is not the same sort of person he was when he committed this offence some 15 months ago, because his health has deteriorated,” Mr Watts said.

Mr Watts also said Razaq was ‘realistic’ about this ‘being a custodial sentence,’ adding: “The only issue is whether or not adequate punishment can only be achieved by an immediate custodial sentence. Given the health grounds, I would respectfully submit that’s not the case.”

Judge Reeds jailed Razaq for 18 months, and told him: “It’s impossible to conceive of a worse case of dangerous driving, this is as bad as it gets.”

“Driving like that could have resulted in death, or very serious injury,” Judge Reeds said, adding that it was only down to ‘luck’ that no-one was injured as a result of Razaq’s offending.

Judge Reeds also banned Razaq from driving for three years, nine months.