University student Henry Nowak killed in Southampton stabbing trial

Henry Nowak was walking home after a night out with football teammates when he was stabbed on Belmont Road in Portswood, Southampton, in an attack that prosecutors say left the 18-year-old with multiple wounds, including a fatal chest injury. Nowak, from Chafford Hundred in Essex, was a first-year University of Southampton student studying accountancy and finance. His death, on 3 December 2025 around 11:30pm, has turned a residential stretch near the university into the focus of a murder trial and a wider debate about youth violence, nightlife safety and the carrying of blades in public.

Vickrum Digwa, 23, is on trial at Southampton Crown Court accused of murder and carrying a knife in public, with an alternative manslaughter charge also before the court. Digwa denies the allegations and has said he acted in self-defence. Court accounts say mobile phone footage captured part of the confrontation before the stabbing, adding a digital record to a case already shaped by witness evidence, medical findings and the question of what happened in the final moments before Nowak was killed.

The weapon described in court as a 21cm blade was referred to in reporting as a kirpan, a Sikh ceremonial blade. That detail has made the case especially sensitive, because it sits at the intersection of criminal law, religious identity and public perception. British Sikh community groups have urged people not to tar an entire faith community over the allegations, underscoring the risk that one violent case can spill into prejudice against a wider group. Kiran Kaur, 53, Digwa’s mother, also denies assisting an offender. Prosecutors allege she removed the weapon from the scene.

Nowak’s family described him as “kind, intelligent, and talented,” words that capture the loss felt far beyond the courtroom. The University of Southampton said it was “shocked and deeply saddened” to confirm that the person who died in Portswood was a student at the institution. For a campus city where students, nightlife and neighbourhood streets overlap late into the evening, the case has exposed the deadly consequences of carrying blades and the fragile boundary between socialising and violence. It has also left a community to confront not just one young man’s death, but the systems that failed to keep him safe.