Six officers, one man face down on a street

A 31-year-old father of two was restrained prone on a residential street by six police officers and died in custody. No officer was charged, and the public inquiry is still sitting.

What happened

On 3 May 2015 Sheku Bayoh, 31, a father of two, was restrained on the ground by six police officers on a residential street in Kirkcaldy, Fife. He died in police custody. The hold was prone: he was face down.

The record does not set out the sequence of the hold, how long it lasted, or what monitoring was attempted. This page can state the configuration and the outcome, and not who held which part of him.

The outcome

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service decided not to take legal action against any of the officers involved. None was charged.

In 2018 his family brought a civil damages action, seeking £1.85 million over what they described as his unlawful killing, according to BBC News. A public inquiry was established to examine the circumstances and whether race was a factor.

The claim was settled in March 2025 without any admission of liability. Police Scotland apologised “for their ordeal”. The sum was not disclosed: in April 2025 the Scottish Police Authority refused a Freedom of Information request for the amount, citing legal privilege, third-party personal data and the risk to those involved. The inquiry continued after the settlement.

What went wrong

The public record is thin on the restraint and heavy on the process. It establishes that six officers restrained one man prone, that he died, and that a decade later the same decisions were still being tested.

A settlement without admission of liability does not answer whether the hold as applied was necessary, proportionate and monitored. It closes the claim, and says nothing about the hold.

What it teaches

Six officers on one man has to be decided at the scene, out loud: who is on the airway, who is counting time, who has called the ambulance, and who is the one person allowed to say stop.

A crowd around a person on the ground tends to produce the opposite. Each officer has a hand somewhere and nobody owns the whole. The failure modes are known: weight on the back and neck, a face pressed into a road, and nobody watching colour and breathing.

The second lesson is what a legal outcome can tell you. A settlement and an inquiry still sitting is not a resolution. Where the facts of a hold are never tested in a criminal court, the service has to answer the training question itself.

Questions for the room

Six officers were on one man. Which of them was responsible for his breathing?
You are the third officer to arrive, and two are already on him. What do you do with your position?
Your policy does not name who owns the airway in a ground restraint. Who could write that line this month?

Evidence and limits

Confidence: confirmed. The Scottish Police Authority’s Freedom of Information response of 23 April 2025 and BBC News reporting of 24 March 2025 were read, and they agree on the settlement without admission of liability and on the withheld amount. The £1.85 million is the sum the family claimed, not a sum awarded.

The record describes the restraint only as prone. Nothing on this page is a finding that the restraint was unlawful, and nothing on it is a finding that it was lawful.

No officer is named. None was charged.

If your teams need to rehearse who owns the airway when several people are on one person, our physical interventions training works through position, duration and monitoring.

Sources

Reviewed 20 October 2026.