By Joe Saunders June 2, 2026 at 11:00am
The death of a young British man in December after a street knifing had already stirred outrage over the way police officers responded.
As 18-year-old Henry Nowak was dying of stab wounds, officers actually handcuffed him, based on the word of the man who stabbed him.
Now, with the killer sentenced to prison on Monday, police bodycam of that night has been released, and it’s causing a new round of fury on social media.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic footage that will be disturbing to some viewers.
🇬🇧 Bodycam footage has been released showing Henry Nowak begging for an ambulance before being handcuffed behind his back.
Nowak: “I’ve been stabbed”
Officer: “I don’t think you have mate”
Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/WqYV760Y14
— Europa.com (@europa) June 1, 2026
As the footage begins, officers are arriving on the scene to find Nowak seated on the ground, propped against a wall. A man says, “My dad’s got him there.”
Should the police officers involved be fired and banned from ever working in law enforcement again?
As they approach the wounded man, another man with him explains that “he keeps dropping from side to side so I’m just trying to keep him sat up. He’s got a mouth full of blood.”
A third man, who turns out to be Nowak’s killer, Vikrum Digwa, claims that Nowak “took my turban off.” (Digwa is a Sikh, a religion that has its roots in northern India and requires its male members to wear turbans and carry knives at all times.)
Digwa also claims his eye is swollen, allegedly from a racist assault by Nowak.
Chillingly, when officers begin to move Nowak — by grabbing his leg and pulling — the wounded man can be heard saying, “I’ve been stabbed.”
“What’s happened to you?” an officer asks.
“I’ve been stabbed,” Nowak repeats.
“You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts?” the officer asks. “Don’t think you have, mate.”
The police then handcuff the clearly helpless man as he nearly screams in pain.
“I can’t breathe!” Nowak can be heard saying.
Nowak is officially placed under arrest as the officer reads him his rights at about the 2:16 mark.
Nowak’s body is completely still at that point.
The apparent indifference of the officers to the dying man’s suffering set off a torrent of criticism on social media.
It appears that police training in the UK involves treating racism allegations as the worst possible crime, so much so that if the person accused of racism is saying, “I’ve been stabbed,” you call him a liar and handcuff him. Look how defensive they became the moment the…
— THE SKIN DOCTOR (@theskindoctor13) June 2, 2026
This is even worse than the descriptions. How disgusting are the British police?
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) June 1, 2026
He’s got a mouth full of blood.
He can’t breathe.
I don’t know how he checked for stab wounds—X-ray vision?
The male officer seems incompetent.— Frugal Delusions (@FrugalDelusions) June 2, 2026
The kids clearly in distress, he’s not responsive
He tells them multiple times he’s been stabbed
Says he can’t breath multiple times
Yet still they put the cuffs on him
Poor kid died alone and in hand cuffs
— Edward (@LucidIntels) June 1, 2026
And Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has previously offered to pay for a wrongful death case against the police officers involved, weighed in again, too. He compared it to the case of George Floyd, the accused counterfeiter and habitual criminal whose death in police custody in Minneapolis in 2020 set off a torrent of establishment media coverage — and deadly rioting.
Send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer.
Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2026
“Send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer,” Musk wrote on the social media platform X on Tuesday.
“Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak.”
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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
