LIZ AUSTIN: My partner was killed by a speeding driver who fled to Pakistan. I want the law changed so no one suffers what I did… but here's how I had Jack's miracle baby 12 months AFTER he died

Updated: 01:00, 17 August 2026 It was just before 6pm on January 13, 2021, and I was working from home. ‘I’m going for a run,’ my partner Jack, then 29, told me. Without looking up from my computer, I replied: ‘OK.’ Off he went. It was the last time I ever saw him. Jack and I would usually run together but that day I was resting in advance of an embryo transfer the following week. It was our first IVF attempt and we were both hugely excited. I’d been eating well and taking it easy to give us the best chance of success. But I will always ask myself if things might have been different had I gone on that run with him. I find it very painful, too, that I didn’t get up and give him a hug as he left. But it was all so ordinary at the time. I didn’t know – how could I? Half an hour later, I finished work and decided to go for a walk and meet him on his way back to our west London flat. I took our usual running route towards the Thames but, as I approached Battersea bridge, I saw flashing lights. An accident. Perhaps Jack had gone a different way to avoid it. I called him but there was no answer. A few minutes later, I called again. Normally he’d pick up quickly, feeling the phone’s vibration in his pocket. I felt a flicker of unease and began walking more quickly towards the police cars gathered around a junction near the bridge. I thought about asking the police what had happened but talked myself out of it – I didn’t want to bother them unnecessarily, so I ran the two miles back to the flat instead, telling myself Jack had gone home a different way. Maybe he was in the shower and didn’t hear the phone. It was our first IVF attempt and we were both hugely excited. I’d been eating well and taking it easy to give us the best chance of success, writes Liz Austin Liz met Aston Villa fan Jack in 2018 through work. They were both in marketing for an international business But deep down, I felt an intense panic growing inside me. I got home and he wasn’t there. So I raced all the way back to the bridge. This time I approached a police officer, who went to speak to a colleague, and when he looked up and began walking towards me, that’s when I knew it was Jack. What was Jack wearing, they asked me. They had Jack’s phone and must have seen my name on it, ringing and ringing. I told them and then they said he had been hit by a car and had died. I like to believe it happened quickly: passers-by tried to revive him, I was later told, and an ambulance arrived quickly but no one could do anything. He was pronounced dead at 6.36pm – just over half an hour after he’d left for his run, and just when I was walking to meet him. Later, I would learn much more – that the car was a Range Rover driven by Rashid Ali, 26, who was doing 40mph, twice the speed limit. He had driven through amber lights at the junction, as Jack crossed. When I saw photos of Rashid I realised I had seen him speaking to police on the side of the road. It was he and his girlfriend who had called emergency services. At first, I felt simple disbelief. I kept asking them if this was really happening and I felt physically sick from the shock. I wanted to see Jack but the police advised me I shouldn’t and so I never saw him again. That’s a decision that tortures me to this day. I wish I had insisted so I could have said goodbye. Officers were sent to tell Jack’s parents, who live in Birmingham, and that night his mum and dad, Teresa and Noel, drove down to London to tell his sister Ciara, who lives in Clapham. They had to wake her in the middle of the night to tell her that her brother had died. It was a real, living nightmare. I called my parents in Australia where it was morning and my mum’s birthday, so she answered the phone excitedly, thinking I was calling to wish her a happy day. Covid meant they couldn’t come to me. Jack’s family wanted us to be together to process it, so the following morning I went back to Birmingham with Teresa, Noel and Ciara and stayed there for six weeks. It’s hard to describe how I felt, it was like an out of body experience. I had compassionate leave from work and those weeks were a blur – just the four of us locked down in a house together. A month later, we had Jack’s funeral in Birmingham – a Covid one, with just 30 people – and later in the summer we held a celebration of his life. Jack and I met in 2018 through work. We were both in marketing for an international business – I’d moved to London on secondment from the Sydney office in 2012 and he joined the company in 2016. He was charismatic and talented and ambitious. I was nine years older than him but that didn’t bother him and he wasn’t afraid to talk about the future. It was so different to anything I’d experienced in previous relationships. In 2019, we moved in together and quickly started to discuss all the serious stuff of life – marriage, children, heading back to Australia. Nothing was off-limits. And then came lockdown and, suddenly, it seemed having a baby should be our priority. We had been trying on and off but I was in my late-30s and worried time was running out. So by late 2020, we had embarked on IVF and after our first round had eight frozen embryos, which was a brilliant result. The first was scheduled for transfer in January 2021 – a week after Jack was killed. When I called a few days after his death to cancel, I can’t remember the conversation I had with the fertility doctor; I was getting through the days on autopilot. But the clinic was wonderful and provided me with online counselling. It also told me Jack had signed a consent form for the embryos to be used in the event of his death. Another shock. I knew nothing about that – he hadn’t mentioned the consent question and, presumably thinking it would never apply, had simply ticked a box to say yes. From that moment, I think I knew deep-down I’d go ahead. The idea of continuing to have our child seemed crazy, but also a miracle. I felt that this was the one thing that was going to save me and bring a living piece of Jack back into the world. More than that, I had wanted to be a mother for such a long time and had finally found someone who wanted the same thing: there was no way I was going to let that chance slip through my hands. And yet there were big hurdles. I wasn’t in a good way mentally or physically in the aftermath of Jack’s death. I struggled to sleep and eat and constantly replayed the accident in my mind, utterly consumed by what had happened. Jack had given permission for embryos to be used in the event of his death  Liz holds her baby daughter, who was born via IVF in December 2021 Weekly counselling was organised to make sure I knew what was involved. All the implications of having Jack’s baby. What it would mean financially to be a single parent. How hard it would be. I’ll admit I often gave the answers I knew they wanted to hear. I just knew I had to do it. So, three months after Jack died, I went ahead with the embryo transfer, at the end of March 2021. I suppose I could have waited longer, but what for? Nothing was going to change. I didn’t know when I would ever ‘feel better’ and I was desperate to know if the IVF would actually work. What was the worst that could happen? I’d already experienced that. No one else knew except a handful of close friends and our families: Jack’s parents never pressured me but were hugely supportive all the way through. Again, the process worked as well as it possibly could and I became pregnant on the very first transfer. I was still so numb I could barely comprehend it. I think I felt grateful that in the depths of my grief something was going to plan but I also worried that the enormous grief I still felt would somehow affect the baby. When I was seven months pregnant, I remember telling my counsellor that I had ‘cried every single day since January’ and was terrified the baby would ‘come out sad because my baseline emotion is just sadness’. She reassured me that’s not how it works. Jack’s family and my close friends took turns to come to scans and appointments with me. I didn’t feel lonely but I did feel cheated. This was something I was supposed to be doing with Jack: this was our thing. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel resentful of all the other couples who got to plan for and share in these moments. I found it helpful to keep a journal of messages and photos for him, as if he was away from home and I was keeping him updated on the pregnancy in writing. Our daughter was born in December 2021. I hadn’t wanted to know the gender because I wanted to experience a ‘good’ surprise and I was very surprised she was a girl – I’d had recurring dreams about having a boy. But she is so Jack – she’s got his humour, character, facial expressions and a love of football. My parents hadn’t been allowed to fly from Australia until that point but came over for the birth, and Jack’s mum was there too. The hospital knew the situation and allowed us time together, after which I went home to our flat. Those first few days felt overwhelming and I definitely questioned what I had done, and whether I could do it in the long run. But it felt good to have a full house, with lots of people coming and going and helping out around the clock. Christmas that year was very different to the year before. It wasn’t a celebration. We wouldn’t even have marked it had it not been my daughter’s first. But I didn’t want her growing up dreading Christmas and I wanted to at least start a tradition with her. In the end, we had a family lunch and then spent Boxing Day at Villa Park watching Aston Villa, Jack’s favourite team. I had already decided that once our daughter was born, I would go back to Australia. You need a village around you when you have a baby and, although I had friends in London, it wasn’t the same. It was a hard decision – Jack’s family were very sad – but I have an amazing network at home and when our daughter was five months old, in May 2022, I moved back to Sydney. I’m 43 now and our daughter is four. I have told her all about her dad and how much he would have loved her. She’s at the age where she asks about him all the time – where is he and why can’t she see him? I tell her he lives in the moon. ‘But why doesn’t he want to come and see me?’ she asks, and my heart breaks every time. I reassure her that he would if he could and he’ll always be watching. She knows he died because he got hit by a car but she has no concept of ‘forever’. When she was learning about road safety at school, she asked questions like: ‘Did he look both ways when he crossed the road? Do you think he cried when he got hurt?’ In the meantime, while my life was changing and I was trying to live with my grief, the police were building a case against Rashid Ali. The process moved very slowly – it wasn’t until April 2023 that he was charged with death by dangerous driving – and it was later revealed that he was in the UK from Pakistan on an expired student visa. Eventually, the trial was scheduled for late July 2024. Jack’s family and friends attended every day but it was only once the trial had started, at the Old Bailey, that we discovered he had fled the country some time before. At no point from the time of the accident to the trial had anyone thought to confiscate his passport. In his absence he was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, banned from driving and sentenced to five years in custody. But that is all theoretical. In reality there has been zero accountability and he remains on the run. There is no formal extradition treaty between the UK and Pakistan – though individual requests are sometimes granted – and as it stands Rashid Ali has got away with it. We all went through a great deal of heartache preparing for the trial, only to realise it was essentially pointless. Earlier this year, the case appeared on Channel 4’s Dispatches episode, Hunting Britain’s Fugitives, highlighting social media posts of him getting married and travelling to Dubai. The investigation even discovered what appears to be one of him in a restaurant in Mayfair, though we’re not sure when that was taken. Rashid is now 32 and living his life carefree, while my daughter grows up with no father. Which is why with Jack’s family we have now launched the Justice for Jack petition, calling for an amendment to the Bail Act, with mandatory passport surrender for people accused of serious crimes. We need 10,000 signatures before the end of the year for the Government to respond. We are trying to change legislation to close the loophole by which criminals are able to keep hold of travel documents. It makes a mockery of the whole expensive, time-consuming legal process if a convicted criminal is able to simply skip the country and avoid serving their sentence. I know nothing will bring Jack back but I do want justice for him. And for our daughter.