The New Neo

There are so many elements of this case it’s hard to know which one to emphasize. What’s more, it’s not easy to get the facts straight. I read many many articles and listened to many many videos before feeling I had any sort of a handle on it, and there are still missing facts.

I’ve found a good summary here. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the others. In particular, I’m referring to the judge’s statement, which you can locate by scrolling down there; it’s outlined in a pale blue box.

My own summary is as follows: In Southampton, England, 18-year-old Henry Nowak crossed the path of 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh wearing a ceremonial knife. A verbal exchange ensued (described by the judge, but somewhat cryptic), part of which was recorded by Nowak on his cellphone. Digwa stabbed Nowak multiple times, and one of the wounds caused fatal bleeding into his chest area. Digwa’s brother – who did not witness the incident but came upon the scene shortly after – called police to report it as a racial aggression by Nowak, and said no one was badly injured and no weapons were used. When the police arrived, despite Nowak’s obvious declining state (previously explained by the Digwas as Nowak’s being drunk, trying to climb a fence, and falling onto a car), and the fact that Nowak kept telling them multiple times that he’d been stabbed and couldn’t breathe, they didn’t believe him and didn’t examine him for wounds. Digwa’s brother had told the dispatcher there were no weapons involved, but had said an ambulance was probably needed for Nowak because of the supposed fall. And meanwhile, while the brother was on the phone, the killer passed the knife (bloody?) to the mother, who hid it; both parents had apparently come onto the scene perhaps because Vickrum had called them.

The website also contains an important audio, that of the emergency call made by the brother. I can’t embed it, but here’s a link. The key moment occurs almost at the outset, when the brother (Gurpreet) frames the problem this way:

Yeah, we’ve just been attacked racially. Yeah, this f***er. Yeah, we just got attacked racially by some white person.

Many people are outraged that the brother wasn’t tried as well as Vickrum and their mother, but I think it’s pretty clear why. The brother never witnessed the altercation and is merely repeating the lies that Vickrum has told him. I believe it’s only later, when Vickrum is jailed and the two speak in Punjabi (a discussion that’s recorded), that Gupreet learns what actually happened.

There is also a police bodycam, which I think isn’t the entire thing, but here’s the link. Among other things, Vickrum lies to police about being injured himself, pointing to a nonexistent eye injury he says he got – while meanwhile, Nowak is dying in front of everyone and the killer says nothing about the stabbing. A female officer asks the male officer. “We have to check that out, don’t we?” referring to the possibility of stab wounds that Nowak is describing in labored breaths. The male officer appears to respond, “No.”

This, in a nutshell, is what is so terrible about the police response. Whether Nowak could have been saved even with prompt medical attention is unclear (the medical examiner says he could not have) but irrelevant. The mindset of the male police officer was set in stone by the brother’s phone call, by Vickrum’s silence about what he’d done, and almost certainly by intensive training in sensitivity to the needs of “brown” racial groups. To question Vickrum’s story and to credit Nowak’s would have opened the officer up to charges of racism, but I doubt it even occurred to him to go that route, so deep was his indoctrination.

Putting it all together – the judge’s statement, the brother’s phone call, and the police video – and you get something of the story. It’s a terrible one, and people are right to be deeply outraged.

But my main question is this, and I have yet to see an answer: why did Vickrum stay at the crime scene? He could have escaped; he already had taken Nowak’s phone with the evidence of the verbal exchange, which did not contain any racial slurs or any attack by Nowak. Vickrum apparently realized there might be other video or photographic evidence of what really had occurred, but there were no actual witnesses other than Nowak and Vickrum himself. Maybe he thought running away would implicate him, and he was gambling that his lies would work to set the scene. So he stayed, and told his brother to make the call, and furnished the lies to his brother, and watched Nowak die – thus, ending the possibility that Nowak would be able to tell police a different tale than Vickrum was relating.

Apparently Vickrum would rather watch Nowak die than confess to stabbing him, either to his brother or to the police arresting Nowak. In service of these self-serving lies, Vickrum involved and implicated his family. His mother almost certainly saw the blood on the knife and was knowingly covering up the crime, but I doubt the brother knew anything other than the lies Vickrum had told him.

A terrible person.

Another issue – this being Britain – is that the carrying of knives (except for folding ones 3 inches or less) is generally banned, but Sikhs are allowed to carry ceremonial ones. A lot of people want to end this exemption. I think that’s a red herring. It’s not the knives themselves. It’s the killer. The knife discussion is similar to the gun discussion in which a focus is on the weapon, as though the knife itself is an agent. It’s not.