{"id":458958,"date":"2026-06-03T14:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/458958\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:38:11","slug":"eleven-officers-and-police-dog-injured-in-terrifying-violence-in-southampton-southampton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/458958\/","title":{"rendered":"Eleven officers and police dog injured in \u2018terrifying\u2019 violence in Southampton | Southampton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eleven officers and a police dog were injured during disorder by those claiming to protest over Henry Nowak\u2019s murder<\/a>, the chief of Hampshire police said, accusing those involved of being \u201cdetermined to spark fear and division\u201d.<\/p>\n

A trail of destruction was left on the streets of Southampton<\/a> after Tuesday night\u2019s riot with car windows smashed and bricks strewn across roads.<\/p>\n

The evening had begun relatively peacefully outside Southampton central police station<\/a> but turned ugly when hundreds of people marched across the city to the neighbourhood where 18-year-old Nowak died and where his killer, Vickrum Digwa, lived.<\/p>\n

Protesters hurled bricks, wheelie bins, bottles and beer cans at police as officers in riot gear stopped them reaching Digwa\u2019s family home.<\/p>\n

People help to clean up in the aftermath of the riots on St Denys Road in Southampton. Photograph: Andrew Croft\/Solent News & Photo Agency\/Solent News<\/p>\n

The chief constable of Hampshire<\/a> police, Alexis Boon, said on Wednesday that 11 officers and a police dog had been injured doing their job \u201cto protect the communities that we serve\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we, as a society, cannot accept is the violent scenes we saw in Southampton last night,\u201d he said. \u201cSome clearly arrived intent on causing disorder and trouble. We saw bottles thrown, makeshift weapons used, damage caused to the homes and vehicles of innocent residents and threats and violence directed towards our officers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we are forced to deal with those determined to spark fear and division, our finite resources are taken away from those who need it most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boon said experienced officers would remain on the streets to keep the community safe in the coming days. He promised to bring those involved in violence on Tuesday evening to justice and said there had been two arrests.<\/p>\n

The Labour leader of Southampton city council, Sarah Bogle, said she believed a number of people had arrived in the city from elsewhere for Tuesday\u2019s demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were pretty awful scenes last night and very unwelcome to see that level of disturbance in what is normally a very quiet neighbourhood,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very very distressing to see what\u2019s happened and it\u2019s such an awful tragedy and I really want to respect and support the principles of Henry Nowak\u2019s family\u2019s wishes to dial down the rhetoric, dial down the tensions, and keep the peace and keep people safe and to honour his memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge tragedy for him and his family and it\u2019s awful when these tragedies are weaponised by people who should know better, whether it\u2019s politicians or the far right. It really is unwelcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophie Martin covers her car\u2019s broken rear window. Photograph: Andrew Croft\/Solent News & Photo Agency\/Solent News<\/p>\n

Residents in the Portswood area said on Wednesday that they had been terrified as protesters gathered near their homes.<\/p>\n

Sophie Martin, a near neighbour of the Digwa family, said both of their families\u2019 cars were smashed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was absolutely terrifying,\u201d she said. \u201cOur two young boys were asleep. It is just an absolute destruction, and I just thought, what am I going to tell the kids, they\u2019re three and six. It was absolutely petrifying. I know they weren\u2019t targeting us but my other half has decided not to go to work today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is glass absolutely everywhere. We are going to be massively out of pocket. Even when the rioting had stopped and we had taped up the cars we still couldn\u2019t sleep because we were worried they would come back. A few people have said we should move out for a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Savage, a Labour representative for the Portswood ward, described the violence as \u201cabsolutely outrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said it had occurred against a backdrop of long-standing protests against a hotel in the area used to house asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people are really upset by it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey really care about what happened in the last minutes of a poor 18-year-old student\u2019s life, but it doesn\u2019t warrant the violent, disrupting, damaging behaviour we saw last night, we need to wait to find out what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Savage described Portswood as a progressive area with many students and university staff living there. He said he believed most of the demonstrators were from other parts of the city and elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely outrageous,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are people who have been bussed in from other places to cause mayhem in our city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The far-right activist Tommy Robinson was among those who addressed crowds outside the police station during the protest billed as Justice for Henry Nowak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A tribute to Henry Nowak, 18, who was stabbed to death after walking home from a night out in Southampton. Photograph: Andrew Croft\/Solent News & Photo Agency\/Solent News<\/p>\n

People chanted: \u201cRacist police, off our streets\u201d and \u201cshame on you\u201d. They held union flags and homemade signs with slogans such as \u201cHenry\u2019s blood is on your hands\u201d, \u201csave our kids\u201d and \u201cprison 4 police on scene\u201d.<\/p>\n

Digwa, 23, stabbed Nowak, a student at the University of Southampton, five times. Police arrested and handcuffed Nowak after Digwa claimed he had racially abused and assaulted him.<\/p>\n

After Digwa was jailed<\/a>, Nowak\u2019s father, Mark Nowak, condemned the \u201cinhumane and degrading\u201d treatment of his son by police, but said: \u201cWe do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to help make our streets safer for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven officers and a police dog were injured during disorder by those claiming to protest over Henry Nowak\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-458958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}