Mum was a hero who paid the ultimate price
Daughter’s praise as killer jailed for life
THE daughter of police officer Sharon Beshenivsky said she will always have a void in her life as the last of her killers was jailed.
You and your gang robbed me of a future with mum
LYDIA BESHENIVSKY TO HER MOTHER’S KILLER
Lydia Beshenivsky, who turned four on the day the PC was shot dead in 2005, said her mother was a hero who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
She told a court yesterday she was too young and innocent to understand how her mother had died responding to an armed raid.
Piran Ditta Khan, 75, mastermind of the robbery, will die in jail after he was sentenced to at least 40 years.
Lydia, now 22, remembered a car arriving at her house during her birthday party. She said: “It was the police coming to take my dad away. I had no idea where he was going.
“It did not concern me as I was too busy playing and eating cake.”
She was told by others that she “screamed her head off ” when informed of her mother’s death, though she has no memory of that now.
Lydia said: “I remember asking when she was coming home and being confused about why she wasn’t.
“I have little to no memory of my mum. I had to rely on my mum’s friends telling me about her. I have to look at photos to remind me of my mum.”
Lydia was proud of her mother but added: “There will always be a void in my life, a void that should have been filled with my mum’s presence.”
Directing her words to the killer, she told him: “You and your associates robbed me of a future and time with my mum.”
Paul Beshenivsky, who was married to Sharon for four years when she died, said telling the children what had happened was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He added: “We lost Sharon in the most brutal way.
If Piran Ditta Khan had never organised the robbery, Sharon would have come home that day.” PC Beshenivsky had three children and was stepmother to her husband’s two. She had only been an officer with West Yorkshire Police for nine months when she was killed.
She and PC Teresa Milburn, who survived being shot in the chest, volunteered to attend the raid at Universal Express travel agents in Bradford on November 18, 2005.
Khan was in a lookout car when the two officers were shot, but played a pivotal role in planning the raid.
This made him as guilty as if he had pulled the trigger himself, Leeds crown court was told.
He fled to Pakistan two months after the murder and remained at liberty for 15 years until he was arrested in January 2020 and extradited to the UK last year.
Six other members of the gang had already been sentenced.