Man denies encouraging brother to race before fatal crash

A man said he did not encourage his brother to drive dangerously and denied racing moments before a crash that killed a father-of-two and seriously injured his nine-year-old son.

Rhys Jenkins, from Deuddwr, Powys, died at the scene on the A483 near Welshpool in November 2024. His son, Ioan, was airlifted to hospital in Liverpool with serious injuries.

Umar Ben Yusaf, 35, and Abubakr Ben Yusaf, 31, deny causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

Abubakr Ben Yusaf also denies a charge of causing death while driving uninsured.

Umar Ben Yusaf told Mold Crown Court that he and his brother had both been working as locum optometrists and shared a flat in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, but were travelling back to their family home in Manchester in separate cars on the evening of 16 November 2024.

Umar Ben Yusaf said he had left the flat first and did not know what time his brother had left, adding they had not been in contact on the journey nor had they been tracking each other.

Asked if there had been any plan to race his brother back to Manchester, he said no.

He was reminded about Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) evidence at the Newtown bypass in Powys, which showed that his blue Audi A4 was about six seconds behind his brother's red BMW X3, but he said he had not seen his brother's vehicle.

"Were you racing at that point?" asked his barrister Sean Minihan.

He agreed he had overtaken some vehicles on the journey, but said, "every overtake I did was in a safe manner".

Umar Ben Yusaf accepted, having seen dashcam footage, that he had overtaken a vehicle belonging to witness Emma Crabtree 20 seconds after his brother, but said he had not seen his brother overtake ahead of him.

He did not know how fast he was travelling himself, because he was "concentrating on the road and completing the manoeuvre", he added.

He described seeing a car ahead of him "moving side to side", just after he overtook a transit van, adding he saw its brake lights, but the car "didn't gain control... it hit the verge and was snapped over to the right, travelling sideways".

"I heard a really loud bang... I don't remember seeing the car hitting another car... It happened in a matter of seconds."

Umar Ben Yusaf said he was "scared" when he saw the car moving and he started slowing down.

Despite seeing the vehicle from the distance from it he was, he "could not see what it was".

He went on to describe avoiding debris in the road and said at the point when the vehicle started going sideways, he realised it was a red BMW and it "made m