A police force breached its duty of care to a woman by failing to warn her that her abusive ex-partner was outside her house minutes before he stabbed her seven times in front of her children, the high court has found.
Esengul Woodcock’s neighbour made a 999 call to Northamptonshire police approximately 13 minutes before the attack, on 19 March 2015, informing officers that Riza Guzelyurt was loitering outside Woodcock’s house, but the force did not pass on the warning.
When Woodcock left her house she was stabbed at least seven times. Guzelyurt, who had a long history of harassment and attacks on her that was known to police, was later convicted of attempted murder and imprisoned for life.
Woodcock’s claim to sue the police was initially rejected at the county court but, in a judgment published on Tuesday, Mr Justice Ritchie found that the lower court was wrong to find Northamptonshire police neither owed Woodcock a duty of care, nor had breached it.
Ritchie wrote: “He [Guzelyurt] had tried twice already that night to storm the claimant’s house. In the last two days he had threatened to kill her and anally rape her children, caused criminal damage to her car, breached bail at her work and in the town and was now focusing on attacking her home.
“In my judgment there would be little point in advising the claimant to ask neighbours to keep watch for RG and to tell the claimant or the police, if the police were then going to keep any such report secret from the claimant at the precise time when the claimant was due to leave the house to go to work.”
Guzelyurt had previously carried out two alleged assaults on Woodcock, been arrested three times and persistently breached bail conditions preventing him from contacting her or going to her home. By late evening of 18 March 2015, the police had decided to arrest him for threats to kill, criminal damage and breach of bail conditions.
In the 999 call made by the neighbour at 7.32am on 19 March 2015, she told the operator: “I can see him lurking outside the lady’s house, I think he’s gonna attack her when she comes out to go to work … She’s going to go to work about 7.45.” The neighbour told the operator she had tried contacting Woodcock but she had changed her mobile number and – rightly, according to Ritchie – did not want to go outside to tell her.
In reaching his decision that a duty of care was owed, the judge highlighted that the police watchdog’s investigation into the events recommended that Northamptonshire police revise their threat to life policy “to allow for situations such as this where a warning to the victim is considered within a short timeframe using a shorter process”. Ritchie also noted that the police accepted that it had wrongly recorded the risk posed to Woodcock by Guzelyurt as “medium” instead of “high”.
He wrote: “The circumstances of this case gave rise, in my judgment, to a common law duty on the defendant to call the claimant once they had been informed by a neighbour that [Guzelyurt] was loitering outside her property.”
He sent the case back to the county court to decide whether there was causation between Northamptonshire police’s breach of duty and Woodcock’s injuries.
