‘I can’t breathe’: Outrage after UK police handcuff dying student

Body camera footage of a dying student who was handcuffed by British police after being stabbed by a Sikh man and falsely accused of racially abusing his murderer sparked outrage Tuesday.

Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak is heard repeatedly telling police “I can’t breathe” in the footage captured as he lay mortally wounded in December after a night out with his football team members.

A judge on Monday jailed his killer, 23-year-old Sikh Vickrum Digwa, for at least 21 years for stabbing Nowak to death with a ceremonial knife with a 21cm (8 inch) blade.

When police arrived at the scene in the south coast city of Southampton, Digwa lied to officers, telling them Nowak had racially insulted him and that he was the victim.

The footage, which was played during Digwa’s trial, shows police accepting the aggressor’s accusation, and rather than helping Nowak initially placing him in handcuffs despite his pleas that he had been stabbed and could not breathe.

One officer can be heard asking Nowak: “You’ve been stabbed, whereabouts?” before adding: “Don’t think you have, mate.”

Moments later the young student collapsed and became unconscious.

Speaking after Digwa was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court, Nowak’s father Mark described the police treatment of his son as “shocking”.

He called Nowak’s treatment “inhumane and degrading… his murderer, however, was afforded decency. He was believed”.

The family gave permission for police to release the bodycam footage.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “awful, shocking case” on X on Monday, saying it was right the independent police complaints watchdog was investigating officers’ “response to (Nowak’s) senseless murder”.

Main opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch and far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called for changes to police diversity policies.

Farage said there needed to be an end to “anti-white prejudice” and recognition that “white lives matter”.

– Two-tier culture’ –

He said Nowak’s words echoed the 2020 case of George Floyd, a black killed by police in the United States.

“I can’t breathe. Familiar words. Remember career criminal George Floyd, who died in appalling circumstances in Midwest America,” Farage said.

At the time “Keir Starmer was taking the knee. Black Lives Matter exploded all over the country. Churchill’s statue was defaced,” Farage said.

But after Nowak’s death there has been “absolute silence, proof … we’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.”

Change was needed, Farage said, “if our society is not to be ripped apart” amid distrust between communities, and concern over policing and institutions.

Badenoch accused Farage of “deepening divisions” with his comments.

But she also took at aim at so-called “two-tier policing” in which police allegedly deal with ethnic minorities more leniently.

Badenoch, whose party has lost support on the right to Reform UK, called for citizens to be treated equally by police regardless of ethnicity.

“No two-tier policing, no believing that racism only happens to ethnic minorities. It happens to everyone,” she told Good Morning Britain television.

“And the police need to be trained like that, not with the terrible anti-racism training, which is just reverse racism and reverse discrimination,” she said.

American tech tycooon Elon Musk has posted on X an offer to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder.

Digwa was due in court again Tuesday with his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, 27, and his father, Moga Singh, 52, on weapons offences.

All three face charges of possession of offensive weapons including a flick knife, an extendable baton, knuckledusters, a machete, swords and kusaris.

Digwa’s family apologised to Nowak’s family for the killing and for bringing the Sikh community into “disrepute”.

The convicted killer’s mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, will be sentenced on July 17 for assisting an offender by taking the knife back to the family home.

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