‘We lost everything’: Police officer’s Salisbury horror
A police officer who was poisoned by novichok while investigating the Salisbury attack has told how his family have had to move house for their own safety. Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was the first investigator to enter Sergei Skripal’s home after the former double agent and his daughter fell ill in March. Mr Bailey and other officers did not know at the time that novichok had been used.
The officer described how he passed through the front door – later found to be contaminated with novichok – wearing a forensic suit hours after the casualties passed out in Salisbury. “I was the first person into the house,” he told BBC Panorama. “We had to make sure that there were no other casualties in the
house. It was vital for us to find out what had actually happened to them … the house was in darkness. It just looked normal. There was nothing untoward. Came out of the house, secured it again, took our forensic suits off, which we then bagged up and then went back to the station.”
Mr Bailey, who is married with two young children, said he began to feel ill soon afterwards but went to bed as normal after his shift, in the hope he would sleep it off. “My pupils were like pin pricks and I was quite sweaty and hot,” he recalled. “At that time I put it down to being tired and stressed.”
The following day he was feeling worse and his family rushed him to hospital. “Everything was juddering, I was very unsteady on my feet,” he said. “The sweating had gone from my forehead down my back. My whole body was dripping with sweat.”
When the officer was told tests revealed he had been poisoned with novichok, one of the deadliest known nerve agents, he said he was “petrified”. Mr Bailey still does not know how he came into contact with the substance, whether it had gone through his gloves or he had accidentally transferred it to his skin by adjusting his goggles or face mask. “It’s such an outrageous, dangerous way of doing something that it angered me as well because any number of people could have been affected by that,” he added.
When he came off duty he travelled to Bourne Hill police station and then to his home, unwittingly contaminating both. Mr Bailey and his family can no longer live in their home and he said the ordeal had given them an “emotional battering”. “Not only did we lose the house, we lost all of our possessions, including everything the kids owned, we lost all that, the cars,” he added. “We lost everything. And yeah it’s been very difficult to kind of come to terms with that.”
Mr Bailey was discharged from hospital on 22 March but may face long-term health issues. Both Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were initially in a critical condition in intensive care, but were later discharged from Salisbury District Hospital. Mr Bailey remained conscious during his treatment and said: “It was painful at the beginning … I had five or six infusions at any one time in my arms. One of the Skripals was in the room right next to me. It was all guarded by the police.”
Everything was juddering, I was very unsteady on my feet. My whole body was dripping with sweat
death of Dawn Sturgess. He said: “My heart goes out to Dawn and her family because I was able to walk out of hospital and sadly she wasn’t.”
The officer, who has been hailed as a hero, previously said he had been overwhelmed by support from the public and fellow police. His wife, Sarah, described the poisoning as the “most traumatic incident” of their family’s life earlier this year and added: “Nick doesn’t like the term hero, but he has always been a hero to me and our children.”
Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Kier Pritchard said the officer was “a credit to Wiltshire Police and the wider police family”. He said the cause of the Skripals’ illness was initially unknown and officers had “inadvertently put themselves in harm’s way whilst simply carrying out their role”.
‘Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack – The Inside Story’ is available on BBC iPlayer