As he lay dying on a Southampton driveway, Henry Nowak told police he could not breathe. He said he had been stabbed. An officer replied: 'I don't think you have mate.'
Minutes earlier, on 3 December, the 18-year-old student had been walking home alone after a night out with friends when Vickrum Digwa attacked him with a 21cm (8in) ceremonial Sikh knife. Digwa, 23, filmed Nowak as he collapsed, then called police and falsely claimed he was the victim of a racist assault. When officers arrived, they handcuffed the wounded teenager. He died at the scene.
“Bodycam footage of Henry Nowak handcuffed while dying sparks protests and a US vice-president's intervention, prompting a UK government backlash.”
Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years. But the release of police bodycam footage last week triggered violent protests in Southampton on Tuesday. And it drew an explosive intervention from the US vice-president.
'The only response is righteous anger,' JD Vance posted on X. He blamed Nowak's death on 'the mass invasion of migrants' and said the teenager died 'the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him'.
Downing Street hit back. A spokesman said Nowak's family 'said they do not want his death to be used to create further division'. 'Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances,' the statement added. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed Digwa was born British.
Josh MacAlister, the minister for children and families, went further on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions. 'There are people who are trying to import that kind of toxic politics here into the UK and I don't want to have anything to do with it,' he said. 'I don't think we need advice from American politicians... on how to have effective policing here in the UK.'
For some, the anger is personal. Simon Dorrington travelled from his home in Eastleigh to the spot where Nowak died. He would have been at the protest but, with a prosthetic leg, felt physically unable. Tears in his eyes, he said the case had 'poleaxed' him. 'I hate them,' he told a reporter, speaking of the police. 'A couple of officers walked by and I just called them racist.' He described feeling the authorities were 'anti-white'.
On Sunday, members of White Vanguard, a neo-Nazi cell, laid flowers outside Portswood police station near the murder scene. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for an 'independent rapid review' into the circumstances, writing to Sir Keir Starmer that the questions raised 'concern not only what happened to Henry but overall public confidence in policing'.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is already investigating police behaviour. An inquest jury is to consider next year whether 'any act or omission by police officers' or delay in treatment contributed to Nowak's death. For now, a city waits, and a family has asked that their son's name not be used to divide.