Two Leeds street racers jailed over deaths of mother and daughter

Two men have been jailed after a street race through Leeds ended in the deaths of a mother and her four-year-old daughter.

Jaskomal Rehat, 37, and Hardeep Bachu, 29, did not know each other when they raced through a built-up area in rush hour in January 2023. Bachu was in a white Audi TT and Rehat was in a black BMW. Dashcam footage caught the pair boasting about their high-performance cars, including a reference to '560 horsepower'. It emerged in court that Rehat already had 11 points on his licence.

Prosecutors said Bachu was driving at 89 miles per hour in a 40mph zone that was about to become a 30mph zone. He lost control of the Audi, mounted the pavement and struck Justyna Hulboj and her daughter Lena Czapczyk. The mother and child were on their way to school, and Hulboj had stopped to adjust her daughter's coat.

At Leeds Crown Court, Bachu was jailed for 12 years. Rehat was jailed for 16 years, even though his car did not hit the victims, because he denied responsibility and fled the scene, which meant the case went to trial. The judge said: 'A road is not a racetrack. A powerful car is not an invitation to test its limits on a public road. Two people died. They'd done nothing wrong. They were simply walking to school.'

In a statement read in court, Hulboj's fiance and Lena's father said: 'I had everything that was most important in life. When I said goodbye to my family with the words I love you, I didn't know that it would be the last time I saw them. My whole world collapsed in one second. We had so many plans and dreams and in one moment, it all ended.'

The case left the family without the two victims, who had been walking to school when they were killed.