Gun crime: 'I'll be crying for the rest of my life'

Human Rights

Thursday September 24th 2009

The UK has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe and in the past 10 years, violent crime has risen by 77%. In 2007, 973 people were murdered. Iffat Rizvi's daughter Sabina was shot in 2003, after being caught up in a dispute over a car. She was 25 years old. Iffat, a social worker, hasn't been able to work since the death of her daughter and has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. She has set up 'Starr' (Sabina's Trust Against Revolvers and Racism) to raise awareness of gun crime and is holding a memorial day today for all those lost to violent crime
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Thursday September 24th 2009

Sabina Rizvi. Photographs: Iffat Rizvi

Sabina was the eldest of our three children and such a beautiful girl. She was a giggly young woman but also very headstrong. A “straight A” student, I thought she’d make a good solicitor, but Sabina, being a free spirit, had other ideas. She was trying to become a music promoter as well as going into business. She was very ambitious and trying to find her way in life.

Sabina loved cars and a friend of hers, Mark, offered her an Audi TT to buy. It was very expensive and I didn’t want her to buy it, but she’d fallen in love with it. When she rang me to tell me she’d bought it, it was as if she’d won the world, so I couldn’t be annoyed with her. The following day however, she told me that the owners of the car were threatening her, saying it’d been stolen and that they wanted it back. Sabina immediately phoned the police and went with Mark to the police station to try and sort things out. I spoke to her several times that evening, and she said everything was fine.

The next morning, I was just leaving for work when two police officers came to the front door. I wasn’t worried as I thought they’d come about the car. They asked if I was Sabina’s mum and if I was alone and would I like to sit down. “We have some bad news for you”, and they said “Sabina’s dead”, just like that.

I can still hear those words, you never forget how you’re told. They said that she’d left the police station around 2am with Mark, and two cars had followed them and shot at them several times. Sabina died at the scene. I just screamed so hard. I thought I was suffocating. I ran up the stairs to my husband, screaming: “What are they saying? They’re saying Sabina’s dead.” I didn’t know what was happening.

I desperately wanted to see her then, I just couldn’t believe that anything could take her away. I thought if I saw her she would just wake up, but the police said we couldn’t, that they’d already started the autopsy. I felt numb, the pain is so severe, you can’t feel anything. Your heart has been ripped out from the bottom of your stomach, and you’re in so much agony you can’t feel it.

The next day, the police took us to the hospital. Sabina was laying on a metal gurney, covered with a red blanket up to her neck. I just wanted to hug her and pick her up, but she was so cold and hard, this wasn’t my Sabina. After the post mortem, they hadn’t put her face back properly. She’d been shot in her neck and a bullet had gone through her nose, her eyes were slightly open. My husband Pete, had fallen on the floor, screaming: “No, my love.”

We weren’t offered any support to help with the trauma of losing Sabina. I felt so fearful all the time. I couldn’t come out of the living room for days and I couldn’t sleep until my sons were in the room with me. Everything hurt, my fingers would go numb and I had constant flashbacks. We had a police liaison officer with us every day but they weren’t trained counsellors and when I asked for support they said there wasn’t any.

I asked for help from a nationwide counselling charity for my husband and son, but they told me they wouldn’t be ready for counselling until after six months. I asked my GP for help but all he did was to try and give me tranquilisers.

My husband wasn’t coping and started drinking heavily to numb the pain. We were both diagnosed with cancer a year after we lost Sabina, I think that was part of the grief. My husband had chemotherapy, but then caught an infection and refused treatment – he didn’t want to carry on without Sabina. He died the day before the trial started. I was almost relieved that someone was with her now, that she wasn’t alone. I went to the cemetery every day, it was the only peace I could find.

We had to wait over a year for the trial to start and the way we were treated at the court was horrendous. We went every day, but there was no compassion that we had lost a child. The McPherson report recommends that victims' families should have legal representation, and you need it, you need warmth. The trial was very anti-climactic for me. You desperately want justice, to find out exactly what happened, but all it did was confirm that Sabina wasn’t going to come back. Paul Asbury, one of the murderers, was found guilty but the police don’t think he pulled the trigger, those people are still out there. I feel very let down by the police.

When you lose a child, you never get closure, you’ve been blown out of this world. Night after night I go through what happened, and try to make sense of it, but you can’t. There’s no sense to guns, no sense to Sabina’s murder. You really need emotional help, but the only understanding I got was from other parents who’d lost children, they know you’ll be crying for the rest of your life.

• Iffat Rizvi was interviewed by journalist Claire Colley

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