‘It escalated to a quite horrendous point’: Woman wrongly named as officer in Henry Nowak arrest on how misinformation ‘spread like wildfire’

A woman incorrectly named as one of the officers involved in the arrest of Henry Nowak has spoken to Full Fact about the “onslaught of thousands of people” misidentifying her online and how this resulted in her being relocated for her safety.

The names of Christi Hill and her former colleague Tristan Parsons were wrongly shared online in connection to the arrest of 18-year-old University of Southampton student Henry Nowak by police after he had been stabbed in December 2025.

Killer Vickrum Digwa, 23, lied to police at the scene, claiming he had been the victim of a racist attack. Digwa was found guilty of murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years.

Last week Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary released footage of Mr Nowak’s arrest. The video shows him handcuffed and lying on the ground, saying “I've been stabbed” and an officer replying “I don't think you have mate”.

Watch our full interview with Christi here:

The names of Christi Hill and Tristan Parsons were soon circulating online with false claims they were the officers in the bodycam footage. Hampshire police have not named the officers involved in the arrest, though they have warned about online posts “sharing names that are simply not true”.

But Hampshire Police Federation (a staff association for the force) confirmed to Full Fact that neither Christi Hill nor Tristan Parsons were involved in the incident.

Posts ‘spread like wildfire’

Christi, who said she left Hampshire Constabulary in April 2024, more than a year before Mr Nowak’s death, told us how a few social media posts using an old photo to wrongly link her to the arrest of Henry Nowak soon “spread like wildfire”.

“You see one or two derogatory comments online, and you know, I wasn't really fussed at the time, I thought that's a bit unfortunate, they've got the wrong news. What I wasn't prepared for, is four to five hours later, the onslaught of thousands of people with the misidentification of numerous people”.

She described seeing social media posts “saying that I shouldn't be alive, people saying that I needed to be arrested and prosecuted.

“If you typed my name in at points, it came up that I was a murderer, a predator, that I stood by and watched somebody die. You know, it's alarming to see that written about you at any stage, frustrating to know how false it is, and impossible that that's happened, and yet, you know, quite upsetting that such a large amount of people online globally took that as the truth and shared it [...] it's so easy to share and click a like.”

Grok ‘fuelling false information’

Christi stressed that “this is nothing in comparison to what the Nowak family are going through at this time. I want to be really, really clear about that” but said she had “feared for her safety” over the last few days.

“It escalated to a real, quite horrendous point [...] in that misinformation flying around. I would say that people were being vicious, really quite vicious in a derogatory way with no evidence whatsoever.” This led to her temporary relocation by the police.

Christi said she was concerned about people using the AI assistant Grok as a “fact-checking tool” after the platform incorrectly named her and her former colleague Tristan Parsons as the arresting officers in the Henry Nowak incident.

“That was incredibly alarming… it was fuelling false information.

“What I’m calling for [from AI platforms like Grok] is a real call for action, that this cannot happen again, because where does that stop when there’s a witch hunt for people that are simply just not involved in an incident?”

Grok has since acknowledged it made an error when incorrectly naming Christi Hill and Tristan Parsons as the officers shown in the bodycam footage. We’ve contacted X for comment but the company has not responded.

Full Fact often sees people being mistakenly identified as perpetrators or victims during significant events such as this, and we have previously fact checked a number of claims which identified the wrong person in the aftermath of a major incident. It’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is accurate before sharing.

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