What happened
Anu Okusanya, 46, had moved to Northern Ireland from Nigeria more than a year before. On 24 August 2024 she finished a 12-hour shift as a care worker and walked home on her usual route through Damolly Village in Newry. On the way she saw a gang beating another person.
She ran to a neighbour’s house to raise the alarm. She arrived gasping and could not speak. Police officers gave CPR and used a defibrillator, and she was taken to hospital, where she died some days later.
She had been attacked in the same area before. Her brother said a boy threw liquid over her in “broad daylight” in June. On another occasion, he said, a gang followed her home, banged on her door and “terrorised” her. Both attacks were reported to the police.
The outcome
No prosecution was reported. The Police Service of Northern Ireland described the incident as a verbal altercation that she witnessed but was not directly involved in, and her death was not treated as a homicide.
Her family said she had an asthma attack and multiple heart attacks. The Justice Minister, Naomi Long, called the death “devastating” and said people from ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland were living in “abject terror”. According to the appeal page, £10,000 was raised towards a gravestone and support for her son, who had been due to arrive on 12 September to live with her.
What went wrong
The sources record no finding against an employer. What they do record is a pattern: two reported attacks in the streets around her home, and a third confrontation she ran from.
Her family’s account is that she knew the group. “She thought she was running for her life,” they said. “Unfortunately she ran into her death.”
The classification matters too. A death recorded as a medical event after a verbal altercation is a death nobody investigates as an attack on a worker. Whether her employer knew about the June attack is not recorded. Neither is any change to her route, her hours or how she got home.
What it teaches
Risk assessment for a care worker does not stop at the door of the client’s home. It runs from the last call of the shift to the worker’s own front door, and a 12-hour shift puts that walk late in the day.
If a worker has been attacked twice on the same route, the third journey is foreseeable. Repetition against staff is information, and it belongs in a record someone reads, with a response attached: a lift, a taxi, a change of hours, two workers leaving together. Advice to be careful is not a response.
Questions for the room
- Who records abuse reported by a care worker about their journey home, and where does that record go?
- What does your service do when a worker says they have been attacked twice on the same route?
- Does anyone check how the late shift is getting home, or is that the worker’s own business?
- If a worker witnesses violence off site, what support is owed, and by whom?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Two sources: BBC News NI and the fundraising appeal set up by the Newry Reporter. The medical sequence, an asthma attack and multiple heart attacks, is the family’s account, not a coroner’s finding. The pack says she ran to a neighbour’s house and the vault card says a friend’s; this page follows the pack. No employer is named in the sources, and none is implied.
Our lone working training covers the journey to and from work as part of a lone worker’s risk assessment.
Sources
- BBC News NI, 2024 · https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v5yn6q15do
- GoFundMe, Newry Reporter appeal, 2024 · https://www.gofundme.com/f/anu-okusanya
Reviewed 20 October 2026.