‘I can’t breathe’: Outrage as bodycam reveals UK police handcuffed dying student

Police in the UK dismissed a university student who told them, “I can’t breathe”, as he lay dying after being stabbed, widely condemned bodycam footage has revealed.

Warning: This story contains content that some readers may find distressing.

The video of police responding to the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in the south of England has been met with outrage, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer admitting he was “horrified” by the footage and saying police had “serious questions” to answer.

Nowak was stabbed outside a home in Southampton on December 3 last year by Vickrum Digwa, 23, who was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 21 years in prison on Monday for the murder.

However, when police responded to the incident, they arrested Nowak, who is seen lying on the ground telling police he has been stabbed and that he is having trouble breathing.

“You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts?” an officer said in the video.

“Don’t think you have, mate.”

Starmer said the footage was “harrowing”.

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“I have to say, as a father of a 17-year-old boy, I felt sick watching it,” he said.

“There are clearly serious questions that have to be addressed, not least how accusations of racism informed decision-making in this case.

Digwa had falsely claimed he had been the victim of a racist attack by Nowak, who was white.

Nowak was a first-year student at the University of Southampton who had been out with friends.

Police officers walked up to the scene of what had been reported as an assault.

Nowak could be seen on a driveway and was being held up by someone who said he had a mouthful of blood.

Digwa was standing nearby and told officers he had also been injured, pointing to his eyelid that he said was swollen.

He claimed that Nowak had knocked off his turban and pulled his hair.

After Nowak was handcuffed, officers laid him on his side and searched for stab wounds.

He appeared to have lost consciousness when one of the officers said he was being arrested for assault and read him his rights.

When officers discovered his injuries, they uncuffed him and started CPR, police said.

Digwa was convicted of murder in Southampton Crown Court.

Judge William Mousley told Digwa that he didn’t believe Nowak said anything racist to him.

“You are the only person to make that claim and it is completely at odds with his previous character,” he said.

The sentencing of Digwa and release of the footage prompted protests in the city of Southampton, with hundreds gathering outside a police station, some shouting “I can’t breathe”, an echo of the death of US man George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

A large group then walked to an area near where Nowak was killed and clashed with riot police, who retreated as they were pelted with chairs, rocks and flares.

Nowak’s family were highly critical of the police response, calling their treatment of the teenager “inhumane and degrading”.

“Being told that your son has died is something no one can ever truly comes to terms with. The circumstances were so tragic and unimaginable that the pain is beyond anything I knew existed,” Nowak’s mother, Lucy Ross, said in a statement read by prosecutors.

Police and Crime Commissioner of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Police Donna Wight has asked for an independent investigation into the police response.

“It is a matter of the gravest concern that officers arrived at the scene of a fatal stabbing without adequate information about what they were walking into,” she said.

“Henry died on a street in Southampton, handcuffed, having told police officers on multiple occasions that he had been stabbed and that he could not breathe.

“He was not believed. He was not treated as a victim.”

Reported with Associated Press