‘Dad, I love you. Pray for me': the preventable death of Nimroy Hendricks, stabbed in the heart by a 14-year-old

The Guardian

27-07-2025

In October 2020, Nimroy Hendricks was struggling to manage a situation that was spiralling out of control. He was 24, his girlfriend was 32, and her daughter, Rhianna (not her real name), was a violent and troubled 14-year-old. At the start of that year, Rhianna had stabbed her mother and set fire to a room in their home, been briefly detained, then returned to live with her. Now she was again threatening to stab her mum. Hendricks was desperate to protect his girlfriend, who he had been with for six months.
'I knew it was getting really bad for Nim,' says his father, also called Nimroy Hendricks. 'He couldn't handle the situation but he felt he couldn't leave his girlfriend because he was worried Rhianna might kill her. The mother was afraid of her daughter. She had reported her daughter's threats to police and social services, but Rhianna remained living with her.
'The last time I saw Nim, we sat on the stairs just talking. He told me how bad the situation was with Rhianna. He said: 'Dad, they're not helping her.' Then he gave me a hug and held me tightly and said: 'Dad, I love you. Pray for me.''
On 27 October, Hendricks went to his girlfriend's home in Crawley, West Sussex, to collect a few things. When he arrived, he saw Rhianna had smashed things up in the flat, and told her off, phoning her mother to tell her what had happened. Then he left.
Rhianna was furious. As Hendricks walked down the street with his headphones on, she pursued him with a knife. She shouted that she was going to stab him, then plunged the knife through his heart.
Rhianna was convicted of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility at Bristol crown court in July 2021. Medical experts identified 'a significant abnormality of mind' at the time of the killing. She received a sentence of nine years – five in custody, followed by four on extended licence. During the court proceedings she acknowledged Hendricks had been a positive and supportive influence and 'like a brother' to her. After the trial, detective chief inspector Andy Wolstenholme described Hendricks as 'peaceful, selfless and caring'.
On 18 July, almost five years after the stabbing, the inquest into Hendricks' death concluded. Penelope Schofield, senior coroner for West Sussex, Brighton and Hove, ruled that his death was due to unlawful killing and that the police and social services had each missed an opportunity to intervene shortly beforehand. 'It is possible that had these matters been addressed the perpetrator may not have been in a position to carry out the act which led to Mr Hendricks' death,' she said. 'The issue with this case was that nobody saw the risk to Nim.'
'Everyone was at risk from this girl,' his mother, Lisa, said afterwards. 'Her mother, police officers, social workers – and Nim. But it was as if Nim was an invisible person.'
Hendricks was adored by his parents. Lisa describes him as 'a sweet plum'. She is an artist who previously taught art to prisoners, and Nimroy Hendricks Sr is a musician and decorator. Nimroy and his dad wrote and performed music together and joined forces on decorating jobs.
'When I think of Nim,' says Lisa, 'I think of him in the water in Jamaica, free and happy during days out on the beach when he was swimming, snorkelling, jumping the waves and smiling, showing his missing teeth with his soft curly hair full of sand.'
'We have not just lost our son,' Lisa and Nimroy said at the inquest. 'We have lost our best friend. There is no way to describe the unbearable pain of life without him.'
The day before Hendricks died, Rhianna's mother had reported her missing to the police. She was well known to them. When Rhianna was found in the early hours of 27 October, just hours before killing Hendricks, the police agreed, after some deliberation, that she could go and stay with an 18-year-old girl she described as her 'cousin', but who was not in fact a relative and did not live at the address she had provided to the police.
Hendricks' parents believe that had Rhianna been taken into protective custody that night their son would still be alive. An earlier report into the actions of Sussex police by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, however, did not identify any failings.
It was only after Hendricks' death that a fuller picture emerged of Rhianna's background.
Rhianna's mother became pregnant with her when she was 17. She was subjected to domestic violence while she was pregnant, which experts believe impacted her daughter in the womb.
According to a 2023 review into the events leading up to Hendricks' killing, Rhianna told professionals she had to look after herself at times even when she was a toddler. She displayed violent and aggressive behaviour from the age of six, and at eight she was permanently excluded from her third primary school, after numerous episodes of restraint and fixed-term exclusions.
Referrals to the child and adolescent mental health services were made, but rejected, because she did not 'meet the threshold'. In 2017, when she was 10, she told professionals she had smothered her three-year-old half-brother in a rage. He survived.
In June 2019, when she was 13, she was the victim of a serious attack. Around the same time, she was linked to county lines drug gangs.
She was diagnosed with PTSD, mild learning difficulties and conduct disorder, and possibly also ADHD. A psychological assessment when she was 13 found she was functioning as an eight- or nine-year-old. When asked about her safe places and who had protected her as a child, she was unable to name any person or place.
The 2023 review concluded 'there was a failure of the system as a whole' in relation to Rhianna and that 'the systems in place to protect such vulnerable children are ineffectual'. It found that those supposed to be supporting Rhianna demonstrated a lack of professional curiosity and critical thinking. It also identified 'adultification bias', whereby adults perceive black children like Rhianna to be older than they are and fail to treat them in an age-appropriate way.
'I honestly think part of the failings were due to the fact that she is black and Nimroy was black,' says Lisa. 'They were doing lots of things, but none of them were joined up and none of them worked.'
A common thread in reviews into violent deaths is that opportunities to intervene were missed and communication between agencies was deficient. In Rhianna's case there were so many plans – multi-agency support plans, education and healthcare plans, children-in-need plans and child protection plans – and all of them failed. The thousands of pages of notes written about her by various professionals could not save Hendricks' life.
The number of agencies that intervened may even have had a negative impact on Rhianna's wellbeing. The review stated that Rhianna 'was known to be overwhelmed by the number of services and professionals involved'. It added: 'There is little evidence that, despite significant input and undoubted time and effort, partnership intervention had any positive effect over [Rhianna's] lifetime.'
According to Dr Elie Godsi, a consultant clinical psychologist and chartered member of the British Psychological Society, women and girls commit about 10% of all violent acts. 'This is almost exclusively due to multiple childhood adversity and trauma … in particular, interpersonal violence, substance misuse, mental health problems and self-harm,' he says.
'If you have been a powerless victim, one way of taking back control and power is through being violent. When you have a child with that much trauma, they can't regulate their emotions or behaviour and any kind of conflict is magnified.'
In March, Susannah Hancock's review of girls detained after criminal offences in England and Wales recommended they should no longer be placed in young offender institutions due to the 'complex mental and physical health issues' they often face. Instead, they should be placed in secure schools or secure children's homes. At the time of the review, just 10 girls were being held across England and Wales. It found that offending in this group of girls was 'closely linked to exposure to multiple, traumatic events'. Most girls who commit violent offences are found to have suffered abuse from a very young age or even while still in the womb.
At the time the relationship between Hendricks and Rhianna's mother began, Rhianna had just been released from child detention on licence after the stabbing and fire-setting incidents.
'Nim told me how beautiful it was to see them reunited,' says Lisa. 'Rhianna was learning to ride a bicycle and Nim was a loving and big-hearted presence there.' But Rhianna was prone to bouts of extreme anger and couldn't be talked down when her rage descended.
In the days before she killed Hendricks, Rhianna's anger had been triggered by her mother leaving their home in Crawley to travel to Birmingham, so she could care for her dying mother. She had returned to Crawley the day before Rhianna killed Hendricks, but was fearful of going back to their home because of the threat from her daughter. Instead, she stayed with Hendricks.
Killings by children are extremely rare; killing by girls even more so. But police, social services, schools and youth justice teams need to recognise that children can commit domestic violence as well as be the victims of it, says Lisa. 'These children need to be considered as perpetrators in order that those subjected to this domestic violence are given the protection they deserve. These children, who are so obviously troubled, deserve proper care and therapeutic interventions. If the state does not put in place the structures to help children who [might] kill, we are in increasingly dangerous territory.'
Hendricks' parents are not out for revenge. 'I forgave Rhianna straight away when I read about all the things she has been through,' says Hendricks Sr. 'Everyone failed her.'
He constantly replays the weeks before Rhianna killed his son. 'It was terrible to see someone that young with no protection. They should have kept a close eye on her. She needed help, but they didn't look after her. I go and sit at Nim's graveside and think about how he would still be alive if things had been done differently.'
He is also haunted by the police's refusal to let him see his son after Rhianna stabbed him. When he got the news, he rushed to the scene. 'All I wanted was to see my son. My heart was racing. But the police escorted me away. There was a partition separating me from him. I was told by police I should not stay there. I said, 'I can't go – this is my son.''
'The system is completely broken,' Lisa says, 'and we have paid the highest price for that.'
Like Lisa, Hendricks Sr is calling for a fundamental change in the way dangerous and troubled children are managed. 'When people have mental health problems, they need to be kept in a safe place,' he says. 'I don't think prison is the right place for girls like her and I would never want her to be there. She needs to be put into a therapeutic environment where she is safe and can get the care she needs to heal.'
'Losing Nim is a daily event – it never leaves me,' says Lisa. 'A huge part of me left when he was killed. I am not the same person. It has been harrowing to lose him to the hand of a child. Nim was a beautiful soul, a kind, imperfect, handsome, funny, wise-for-his-years and talented young man. He was an absolute joy and deserved 100% better.'
'Nim and I were so close and I have to continue living with this. I feel so lonely,' says Hendricks Sr. 'All my son was trying to do was help a girl who needed help.'