‘I thought he was going to kill me, I resigned myself to die’ – Sheku PC
Fleeing officer tells inquiry she was left unconscious by ‘almighty blow’ to head
A POLICE officer said she ‘resigned herself to dying’ before being knocked unconscious and stamped on by Sheku Bayoh, an inquiry heard yesterday.
Mr Bayoh, 31, died after being restrained by officers in Kirkcaldy, Fife, in May 2015 as they responded to 999 calls of a man armed with a knife.
The inquiry into his death heard Nicole Short, 36, was left permanently disabled during the incident and is no longer a police officer.
The 5ft 1in former PC said she felt an ‘almighty blow’ as she fled Mr Bayoh and was later told by colleagues she had been stamped on while unconscious.
Miss Short wept briefly before describing how he failed to respond to her commands to stop moving towards her. She told the Edinburgh inquiry’s chief counsel Angela Grahame, QC: ‘I was fearful, I was scared.’
She said she saw Mr Bayoh walking away from two other officers after they had used CS spray, wiping it away from his face like it was ‘water’.
She said it was like he was ‘on a mission’, adding: ‘I thought the guy was going to kill me and I had resigned myself to dying.’
Miss Short added: ‘When he came within an arm’s length of me, I can only describe it as being completely overwhelmed with terror.
‘I was running and I just remember the feeling of what I’ve always described as an almighty blow to the back of my head.’
The inquiry heard how she tried to stand up but kept falling to her knees in the road until PC Alan Paton put her on her feet and told her to ‘run to the van’.
From there, she said she saw events unfold, adding: ‘I can’t say for certain who was where, but I just remember Mr Bayoh.
‘I’m positive he was in a kind of press-up position and he was trying to get up off the ground. I just remember thinking, “Those are three of the biggest guys on shift and he’s managing to lift them up”. It was like nothing I had ever seen before in my life.
‘I just remember being horrified because I had a genuine belief he was going to get up and finish me off.’ In a statement from 2015, Miss Short said several officers discussed the incident in the police canteen afterwards.
It said: ‘At some point I had asked PC Ash Tomlinson, “What happened back there?” And he told me, “Nicole, he was stamping on you”. He told me he thought I was dead after being hit by Mr Bayoh.’
Miss Short told Miss Grahame it was at this point she found out she had been knocked unconscious after the blow to the head.
In her statement, she said she had ‘never ever seen a more crazy, frightening man’ in her life. Miss Grahame asked: ‘If he’d been white, would that have made him seem different to you?’
Miss Short replied: ‘Absolutely not. The actions would have been the same, you know the walking away and the spray not working.
The colour of his skin had no bearing on how we reacted to that call whatsoever.’
In Miss Short’s inquiry statement, prepared in April of this year, she said: ‘The man was deranged, with superhuman strength and intent on killing someone. I have no idea how he died but it was unavoidable.’
Miss Short was asked to put on a police vest, the same size as the one she would have worn on the day of the incident, to establish what would have been on the right side of her body when she fell.
Miss Grahame asked her to point to where on the vest her belt would have been. The inquiry heard that the spray, and possibly handcuffs, would have been on her right side.
The inquiry continues.
‘The man was deranged’