Sheffield murder trial: Eyewitness saw victim's death

Claudio Cruglai told Sheffield Crown Court how he had seen the final moments of Zabair Hussain’s life.

Mr Cruglai, giving evidence via a video link from his native Romania, said he had seen three hooded men kicking Mr Hussain as he lay on the ground on Staniforth Road in Darnall at about 11.20pm on New Year’s Eve.

He said the men ran off before Mr Hussain was run over by a passing car ‘a few seconds’ later.

Mr Cruglai said he had been on Staniforth Road with a friend when they saw the incident unfold from around 100 metres away.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said: “I saw a man on the ground and three people assaulting this person on the ground. Everything happened very fast, within the space of maybe one minute.”

He said one of the men appeared to have a baseball bat but he couldn’t recall what he was doing with it. Mr Cruglai said all three men had been kicking the victim.

He said after the men ran off, he saw Mr Hussain being hit by a black SUV-type car after another vehicle narrowly avoided his prone body.

“I felt I could hear bones breaking,” he said.

Rubnawaz Mohammed, who was driving along Staniforth Road a few minutes before, told the court he had seen one man waving ‘what seemed like a bat’ in the street. Mr Mohammed said three other men had been close to the person with the bat, who he thought could have been drunk.

“One of the males put his arm around the man waving the bat. I thought thank God there is a sensible person out there.”

He said the man with the bat was the same person he saw lying injured in Staniforth Road minutes later.

Idris Sadiq, aged 30, of Darnall Road, denies murder. Sadiq accepts he was present at the scene but says he did not take part in any attack on Mr Hussain.