What happened
On 4 December 2006, PC Gary Etchells, 47, of Glossop, Derbyshire, joined five New Charter Housing Trust officials to evict a tenant from his ground-floor flat in Elizabeth Avenue, Stalybridge. The tenant was 63. Tameside County Court had issued a warrant over rent arrears of more than £2,300.
As the officials approached, the tenant refused to co-operate. He threw a pan of boiling water at a bailiff and a joiner. He came out of the house holding a seven-inch knife and lunged at Etchells. Etchells told Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court that the wound “punctured my carotid artery and severed my Vegas nerve”, and that the bleeding “shot out” of his face. He lost consciousness after calling for urgent assistance. None of the housing officials was injured.
The outcome
Etchells spent time in intensive care before he was stabilised. He returned to duty as a police community support officer, with a large scar along his left cheek, a second scar on his neck from surgery, paralysis of one vocal cord, and lasting effects from the severed nerve.
The tenant was charged with attempted murder and with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, which he denied at the time of the reporting read here. He was described to the court as a local eccentric who had researched housing law on the internet. Inside Housing reported that the housing association notified the Health and Safety Executive, which was assisting the police.
What went wrong
The risk had been stated out loud. The tenant had told civilian staff at his local police station that he would defend his home with pans of boiling water and knives. That did not stop the eviction, and the record does not show what it changed.
The team at the door was five unarmoured housing officials and one police officer. Nothing in the sources describes a joint briefing before the visit, a nominated door controller, or an officer placed between the flat and the staff.
Whether Etchells was working alone is not a question the sources answer. He was the only police officer there, and the only person present trained and equipped for a knife.
What it teaches
A prior threat to staff is intelligence, and intelligence has a shelf life. If it sits in a file until the morning of the eviction, the team at the door carries the risk without the information.
Door control is a role, not an attitude. One person decides who stands where, who speaks, and what happens when the door opens, and everyone else stays back. On a warrant where the occupier has promised violence, that planning is the difference between a police officer meeting a knife and a bailiff meeting it.
Housing officers cannot be expected to make themselves safe at a doorway by standing further back in it. The decision about who goes to the door belongs in the planning meeting, before the van leaves.
Questions for the room
- If a tenant has threatened staff, who has the authority to defer an eviction rather than share the risk?
- Walk the door on your next planned visit: who stands where, who signals, and who carries the radio?
- Which of this week’s visits has a threat on file that the visiting team has not read?
- After an incident like this, what debrief is mandatory, and is it offered to housing staff as well as to the police?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Two sources were read, a BBC News trial report and Inside Housing. They confirm the stabbing, the warrant and the tenant’s prior threat. The eventual conviction and sentence are not confirmed in the material read, so this page does not print them, and the tenant is not named.
Our lone working training covers the pre-visit briefing and the door control that belong before an eviction.
Sources
- BBC News, 2007 · http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6764509.stm
- Inside Housing, 2006 · https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/support-officer-stabbed-while-helping-with-eviction-9925
Reviewed 20 October 2026.