I THOUGHT I’D DIE
Hero cop’s horror at Novichok poisoning
THE police officer poisoned by Novichok says he feared the nerve agent would kill him.
Det Sgt Nick Bailey said he was “petrified” of slipping into a coma like fellow victims Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia.
Speaking for the first time, the dad-of-two revealed how he and his family have had to leave their home and never return after he unwittingly contaminated it.
He was part of a team which carried out a forensic search of Sergei Skripal’s Salisbury home as the exspy and Yulia fought for their lives.
Nick did not know it but he had also been poisoned.
He told the BBC’s Panorama: “My pupils were like pin pricks. I put it down to being tired and stressed.”
Nick tried to sleep it off but his terrified family rushed him to hospital. He added: “Everything was juddering, my whole body was TARGETS: Yulia and Sergei Skripal dripping with sweat.” Blood tests revealed the nerve agent had infected his body.
He said: “Knowing how the other two [the Skripals] were or how badly they’d been affected by it, I was petrified. Not only did we lose the house, we lost all of our possessions, including everything the kids owned, the cars, we lost all that. We lost everything.”
Nick, Sergei, 67, and Yulia, 33, survived the Novichok attack in March, carried out by Russian agents. The police officer could still face long-term health problems.
Mum-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in July after boyfriend Charlie Rowley, 45, gave her a discarded perfume bottle, thought to have been used to spray the agent on Sergei Skripal’s doorknob.