Nick Bailey, a British police officer poisoned with nerve agent Novichok after responding to the scene where former Russian agent聽Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned, said on Saturday that he had quit the police force.
“After 18 years in the Police Force I鈥檝e had to admit defeat and accept that I can no longer do the job,” the ex-detective sergeant wrote on Twitter.聽“I wanted to be a Police Officer since I was a teenager, I couldn鈥檛 envisage doing anything else, which is why this makes me so sad.”
Bailey was one of the first responders to Skripal’s home in the English city of Salisbury, after the former spy and his daughter were poisoned on March 4, 2018. The poison had been sprayed on a door handle. Bailey was聽taken to intensive care after being contaminated with the poison. He returned to duty in 2019.
Bailey said he had dealt with “trauma, violence, upset, injury, and grief” and kept going, but the Salisbury incident took “so much” from him.
“The events in Salisbury in March 2018 took so much from me and although I鈥檝e tried so hard to make it work, I know that I won鈥檛 find peace whilst remaining in that environment,” Bailey wrote in his tweet.
He said he felt “honoured” and “grateful” to have been part of聽Wiltshire Police, and “sorry” for leaving when the “policing family” is “more important now than ever” in the current climate.
“1772: off duty,” the ex-officer wrote at the end of the tweet.
On March 4, 2018,聽 Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious slumped on a bench, vomiting, and fitting in Salisbury, England after reportedly being聽poisoned with nerve agent Novichok.
They have both survived the attack.
Sky News said at the time that apart from the Skripals and Bailey, another eighteen people, including members of the public, police officers, and emergency service workers, received treatment as a result of the nerve agent attack.
Cathy Zhang contributed to this report.
Focus News: UK Officer Poisoned in Salisbury Novichok Chemical Attack ‘Can No Longer Do the Job’