A neck hold in the street, and a man dead in a van

A 34-year-old asylum seeker was held in a headlock during an arrest and died of asphyxia from compression of the neck; an inquest jury found him unlawfully killed.

What happened

In the early hours of 16 December 1994 Oluwashijibomi Lapite, known as Shiji, left a restaurant in Hackney, London. He was 34 and a Nigerian asylum seeker. Two plainclothes officers from Stoke Newington police station followed him, said they had seen him acting suspiciously, and stopped him. A struggle followed.

One officer held him in a headlock. The other told the inquest he had stood up and kicked Lapite in the head twice, “as hard as I could”. The officers said the struggle ended when Lapite pretended to be unconscious. When they realised it was not pretence he was taken to Homerton Hospital and pronounced dead. The cause was asphyxia from compression of the neck. The coroner found more than 40 injuries, including a crushed voice box.

The outcome

At the inquest at St Pancras Coroners Court in January 1996 the jury took 20 minutes to return a unanimous verdict of unlawful killing, the second such verdict on a man in police custody within three months. The coroner had directed that they could reach it only if satisfied that manslaughter had been committed.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it would reconsider its earlier decision not to prosecute; a High Court judicial review later required it to reassess. According to Bhatt Murphy, the family’s solicitors, the claim was settled in 1999 for £15,000, with no admission of liability.

What went wrong

The coroner found a gross disparity between Lapite’s injuries and those of the two officers: a scratch on the tip of one finger, and a bite mark on the shoulder of the officer applying the neck hold. Neither could explain it. The claim that Lapite had tried to strangle an officer was met by the Home Office pathologist’s evidence that serious doubt must be thrown on the allegation, for want of marks on the officer’s neck.

The Butler inquiry, published in August 1999, found separately that a middle-ranking CPS lawyer had made key assessments on the death that should have gone to senior solicitors or outside counsel.

What it teaches

A neck hold kills inside the arrest, before anyone is on the ground. If the force had been proportionate, the injury pattern would have looked proportionate. When it does not, the account has to come from the officers, and “he was violent” does not explain a crushed voice box.

The second lesson is the phrase the officers chose. A limp man is either unconscious or pretending, and they picked the second reading. The van rather than an ambulance follows from that choice.

Questions for the room

One officer had a scratch, the other a bite mark. Lapite had more than 40 injuries. What does that disparity tell you?
The officers believed he was faking. What would have made you check, and what would you do while you checked?
You are applying a neck hold. At what point does it stop being control and become the thing that kills him?
A High Court had to order the CPS to look again. What does that say about who owns a decision not to prosecute?

Evidence and limits

Confidence: probable. The death, date and unlawful-killing verdict are corroborated by reference sources. The £15,000 figure and the 1999 settlement come only from the claimant solicitors’ case list, and the version fetched for this pack carries no Lapite entry; no court record of the sum was located.

An inquest verdict is not a conviction, and no officer is named here, because neither was convicted or sanctioned on the record.

Our restraint reduction training starts with the holds that carry the highest risk, and with what has to be recorded after them.

Sources

Reviewed 20 October 2026.

A neck hold in the street, and a man dead in the back of a van