‘We Lost Everything’: Skripal Case Police Officer in First Interview

After Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in the park in Salisbury, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was dispatched to Skripal's house to check if there were other casualties, he said in an interview for the BBC.

According to Bailey, he was wearing a forensic suit — a full-body jumpsuit with cape, plus a protective mask, goggles and gloves — when he entered the house.

"The house was in darkness. It just looked normal. There was nothing untoward," Bailey told the BBC. "Came out of the house, secured it again, took our forensic suits off, which we then bagged up and then went back to the station."

Apparently, it was during this inspection that Bailey became contaminated. He says he does not know when and how he came into contact with the poisonous substance, but speculates that it could have happened as he adjusted his mask or goggles.

Unaware of being poisoned, he went to Bourne Hill police station and then to his home, unwittingly contaminating both locations, Independent explains.

Bailey and his family can no longer live in their home. He also says he lost all his material possessions because of the contamination.

​"Not only did we lose the house, we lost all of our possessions, including everything the kids owned, we lost all that, the cars," he said. "We lost everything. And yeah it's been very difficult to come to terms with that."

At first, nothing indicated that he had been poisoned. The first night, all Bailey felt was being sweaty and hot, but he wrote those symptoms off to stress and exhaustion.

"My pupils were like pin pricks," he remembered.

But the next day, he felt worse and his family rushed him to the hospital.

"Everything was juddering, I was very unsteady on my feet," he said. "The sweating had gone from my forehead down my back. My whole body was dripping with sweat." 

It was in the hospital that he was told that he had come into contact with a Novichok nerve agent.

Bailey survived and was discharged from the hospital following what he described as painful and stressful treatment.

"I was conscious throughout the whole time," he said. "I had lots of injections. I had five or six infusions at any one time in my arms. Physically, I felt quite numb after a while."

"Physically, I think I bounced back pretty well thanks to the hospital," he added.

Recalling the incident, Bailey said that his heart goes out to Dawn Sturgess, the only person who died after being exposed to the nerve agent during the ordeal.

"My heart goes out to Dawn and her family because I was able to walk out of hospital and, sadly, she wasn't," Bailey said.

A bottle of perfume, allegedly containing enough nerve agent to kill "thousands of people" was discovered in Amesbury, Wiltshire, by Charlie Rowley, 45, who then presented it to Sturgess, his partner. Believing the bottle to contain perfume, Sturgess reportedly sprayed it on her wrists.

UK authorities claim Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by two Russian assassins, who smuggled the nerve agent into UK in a bottle of perfume. Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations and asked to be allowed to cooperate in the investigation, which it called non-transparent — but has been denied access by the British.

The people whom the UK identified as the assassins have spoken with Russia Today editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, and have avowed that they never met Skripal or had been to his house. The UK has not provided hard evidence that the two have been to Skripal's house.

"Once Russia was blamed publicly on behalf of the country […] you have to present the evidence publicly. […] Otherwise, we make a conclusion that everything was staged," said Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alexander Yakovenko, in October, adding that the British government was violating international law.

Yakovenko added that there was no "official application" from the UK government to probe the alleged assassins.