Man jailed for setting fire to murder getaway car

This is the moment a car used in a drive-by shooting is deliberately set on fire to destroy the evidence.

Otis Collier, from Coventry, was found guilty of assisting an offender at Birmingham Crown Court on June 29.

He was jailed for four years at the same court on which will run consecutively to the nine years he’s already serving for unrelated matters.

CCTV from Charterhouse Drive, Coventry, shows Otis Collier and an accomplice running from the blaze after setting alight a VW Golf that hours earlier was used in a fatal shooting.

The car was used he drive-by killing of Abdul Xasan in Coventry on 13 March 2020.

Shotgun cartridges were found in the burned-out shell which ballistics experts matched to spent cartridges recovered from the murder scene in Adelaide Street.

In November 2020, child getaway driver Riaz Ahmed and 19-year-old Carren Monga – who fired the fatal shots through the Golf’s window – were both jailed for life.

Collier agreed to meet Ahmed shortly after the shooting and drove him home in a blue Ford Focus. 

Detective Sergeant Steve Parkes ran the investigation. He said: “Collier was trying to help two gang members get away with murder. He plotted to try and destroy vital evidence.

“Ultimately he failed. Despite the destruction of important forensic evidence, police scientists were able to link the remnants of shotgun cartridges from the Golf to those recovered at the scene. 

He adds: “Through painstaking CCTV enquiries we were able to piece together the movements of both the Golf and the Ford Focus throughout that fateful day.

“We put a compelling case to a jury that led to Ahmed and Monga being jailed for life, and now Collier will also spend several years behind bars."