Overwhelming sadness. Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching helplessness and rage. That is what I felt when I saw the footage of that poor boy, Henry Nowak, dying like a dog on the pavement.
No one should perish like that.
Surrounded by hostile strangers – the police and his killer – without a kind word or a gentle touch, handcuffs on his wrists, mockery in his ears, blood filling his lungs.
‘I’ve been stabbed’ he gasps. ‘I don’t think you have, mate,’ scoffs one of the officers, his voice dripping with contempt.
Can you imagine the heartbreak for this teenager’s parents and family? Their son dying at the hands of a cowardly brute, a thug who had left his house carrying not one but two ceremonial knives: a liar and a fantasist who, in a venal attempt to save his own skin, ensured that Henry was denied even the tiniest crumb of comfort in his final moments, and whose lies might have prevented his victim’s life from being saved.
The Nowak family’s dignity and restraint in the face of such narcissistic evil are nothing short of heroic. To have to sit in court alongside the relatives of this creature, to have to tolerate his supporters, despite all the evidence, still playing the race card, requires hearts of oak.
‘How can you say they’re not racist?’ screamed a young Asian woman as the killer, Vickrum Digwa, was led to the cells. An elderly man in a turban hurled insults at Henry’s lawyer, calling him a ‘f****** bean-head’. How? How dare they? They too must have seen this footage. Have they no compassion, no humanity, no shame?
Teenager Henry Nowak died after being stabbed, with handcuffs on his wrists, blood filling his lungs, and mockery in his ears from the officers at the scene
The Nowak family’s dignity and restraint in the face of such narcissistic evil are nothing short of heroic, writes Sarah Vine (Pictured: Henry with his father Mark)
Police treated Henry with a lack of urgency after his killer, Vickrum Digwa, told them of a potential racist incident. Such is the power of the ‘R’ word, our columnist observes
Apparently not. It’s clear the Digwa clan see themselves as victims. As his mother awaits sentencing for her part in Henry’s death (she was found guilty of trying to stash the murder weapon back at the family home), they issued a statement.
They apologised in a perfunctory manner for ‘the pain and suffering the Nowak family has had to endure,’ then quickly added: ‘We love Vickrum. We will continue to love him.’
They then issued another apology to the Sikh community ‘for our son’s actions which have unfairly brought the community into disrepute’. As if that’s what matters.
Seriously? It would be better if they said nothing at all.
I defy anyone to watch the footage of that poor boy drowning in his own blood and not be overcome with emotion. Henry’s dying plea – ‘I can’t breathe’ – as his killer claims a non-existent eye injury and lies that his victim ‘hasn’t been stabbed’. At this, the officer replies, ‘I know, but we have to check, don’t we?’ – as if Henry’s suffering were nothing more than an inconvenience.
The officers handle him roughly, dragging him across gravel and pulling his hands behind his back to cuff him. Did that hasten his death, put extra strain on his already damaged lungs?
They read him his rights, but already he seems unresponsive. I know it was dark and a fast-moving situation, but still. What must that poor boy have felt as the darkness closed in? Just a kid: not much younger than my own son. He too is a student; he too likes a night out; he too has an older sister. The world is full of Henrys, young men just starting out on life’s journey. None of them deserve his fate.
People have drawn parallels with the George Floyd case in America, the one that sparked worldwide riots and the whole ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Ordinarily, I would say such comparisons are invidious, but I’m afraid there are undeniable similarities here.
Floyd’s last words were also ‘I can’t breathe’, which became a rallying slogan for the protests. Given that, you might have thought Henry’s killing would provoke a similar sense of outrage. But strangely, all the usual suspects, the rent-a-mob Corbynistas, the ‘anti-fascist’ agitators, the woke warriors and Sunday Sandinistas suddenly seem otherwise engaged.
The problem, you see, is that Henry’s death doesn’t fit their narrative – because he was white. And white people can’t ever be victims of racism – or of other ethnicities.
Digwa’s family clearly see themselves as victims, writes Sarah Vine, and it would be better if they said nothing at all (Pictured: His mother Kiran Kaur – found guilty of assisting an offender)
This has stark parallels with the George Floyd case in America – both men’s last words were ‘I can’t breathe’. Yet Henry’s killing hasn’t provoked the same sense of outrage…
That’s why no one believed Henry when he said he had been stabbed. That’s why not one of the attending police tried to save his life until it was far too late.
It’s almost as if, in the minds of these officers, a potential racist incident was far more urgent and more serious than a potential murder. Henry repeatedly tells them he’s been stabbed, but the only voice they hear is that of his killer. Such is the power of the ‘R’ word.
This was not responsible policing, it was ‘suicidal empathy’ in action: the logical conclusion of a mindset that casts certain groups as victims and assumes others are always the aggressor.
It’s the kind of cultural and racial profiling that is tearing this country apart.
Henry’s treatment by the police is a terrible metaphor for the way our society has been warped by the toxic culture wars that have dominated over the past decade. This injustice is not just an awful, one-off misunderstanding but part of a clear, undeniable pattern that goes to the heart of why so many people feel marginalised, misunderstood, victimised – and why Britain is slowly falling apart at the seams.
I wonder what would happen if people took to the streets in protest? Inevitably, they would be cast as ‘far-Right’ and ‘racist’ for daring to speak out about the death of a white teenager at the hands of an Asian man.
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Some might even find themselves arrested and imprisoned, and politicians would no doubt call for ‘calm’, as the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood did yesterday.
At the time of the Floyd riots, Keir Starmer made an impassioned speech about this career criminal and infamously ‘took the knee’ along with his deputy Angela Rayner. Half the parliamentary Labour party did the same on a grass lawn outside the Houses of Parliament.
Henry’s death merited little more from Starmer than a lukewarm post on X bemoaning ‘knife crime’.
The obvious truth is that Britain’s police and courts now operate a two-tier justice system. Situations are not assessed or responded to on the basis of evidence, but according to a system of pre-existing assumptions and deep-seated bias.
Henry’s case is shocking – but far from isolated. ‘Cultural sensitivities’ have been a mitigating factor in the way crimes are handled for years now, from the Pakistani rape gangs to the Manchester Arena bombers (security guard Kyle Lawler told the inquiry he had a ‘bad feeling’ about the terrorist Salman Abedi but did not approach him for fear of being branded a racist) and more recent cases still.
Yes, in the past, the police and courts have been guilty of racial bias. But we have come a long way since the days of Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993 and the mishandling of the case against his killers, which led to the Macpherson Report six years later and the branding of the Metropolitan Police as ‘institutionally racist’.
This newspaper was instrumental in finally bringing two of Stephen’s killers to book, and in highlighting the flaws in the system that led to them almost escaping justice. Now that pendulum seems to have swung too far the other way, and our country is facing a new threat.
If our politicians, police and judiciary don’t step up and restore some sort of balance, the resentment and rage that ordinary people feel will continue to fester – and become a cancer that rots us from within.
