Armed Man Arrested at Greater Manchester School

An Arrest on School Grounds

Footage released by Greater Manchester Police documents the arrest of Both Douk Deng, a 21-year-old South Sudanese national, after he entered the grounds of Edgar Wood Academy in Heywood carrying a hammer, a hatchet, a seven-inch kitchen knife, and a jerry can containing half a litre of petrol. The incident occurred on 6 August of last year, during the school’s summer closure. Deng subsequently pleaded guilty to a range of offences, including criminal damage and possession of weapons and a bladed article in a public place and on school premises.

The arrest was captured on police bodycam footage, which shows Deng wailing as an officer wrestled him to the ground after he attempted to flee. He was led away in handcuffs to a waiting police van. The footage, alongside CCTV material from the school, was released publicly by Greater Manchester Police.

Sequence of Events Before the Arrest

According to Greater Manchester Police, a member of the public raised the alarm after observing Deng behaving unusually in a street near the school, at which point he was already carrying a petrol can with a hammer visibly tied to his belt. Officers were not yet on scene when Deng proceeded to the secondary school and conducted what witnesses described as a full circuit of the building, appearing to scan its perimeter.

CCTV footage shows him kicking over a traffic cone as he entered the school’s grounds and stamping aggressively on a road sign. Construction workers carrying out work on the site during the summer break grew concerned at his behaviour and contacted the police. It was those workers whom Deng appeared to wave at — while still holding the green petrol can — before officers arrived.

When a police car pulled up, Deng attempted to run. An officer ordered him to stop and then to get on the ground; the bodycam recording captures the moment he was brought down. Once restrained, an officer can be heard confirming to colleagues: “He does have a hammer with him as well. And a hatchet.” The full inventory of weapons was established only after he was in custody.

Legal Proceedings and Guilty Plea

Deng, who resides in Heywood, entered guilty pleas at an earlier court hearing to the charges brought against him. The offences encompassed criminal damage — consistent with his conduct caught on CCTV — as well as the possession of offensive weapons and a bladed article both in a public place and specifically on school premises, the latter carrying distinct legal weight under English law.

The case raises questions that extend beyond the individual incident: how individuals in the asylum system who exhibit publicly visible signs of distress or erratic behaviour are identified, assessed, and supported before an escalation occurs. The school was unoccupied at the time; that circumstance alone prevented the situation from unfolding under materially different conditions.

Context and Accountability Gaps

The release of both CCTV and bodycam footage by Greater Manchester Police is notable. Such disclosures are selective, and their timing — coinciding with a guilty plea — suggests a deliberate decision to place the incident in the public record once legal proceedings had advanced sufficiently. The footage itself is unambiguous in documenting the sequence of events.

What the footage does not document — and what the public record has not yet addressed — is the broader institutional context: the support structures, or absence thereof, surrounding a 21-year-old asylum seeker whose behaviour in the days and hours leading up to the incident was, by multiple accounts, visibly disordered. That question sits with agencies whose accountability in such cases rarely receives the same scrutiny as the arrest itself.