Police Officer Shot in Nottingham: Manhunt Underway After Angel Row Shooting

Angel Row in Nottingham city centre, where a police officer was shot on Sunday 18 October 2026
Photo: Angel Row, Nottingham. habiloid, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

At 4.50am on Sunday, Angel Row should have been empty — the pubs closed, the takeaways dark, the last revellers long gone. Instead it became the scene of something almost unthinkable in an English city: a police officer, out on patrol and doing nothing more dramatic than approaching two suspects, was shot in the foot. He is in hospital now, in a stable condition. The two people he stopped — a man and a woman — fled into the night and still have not been found.

I've written about policing for a while, and the detail that stops me is the ordinariness of it. No raid, no armed siege. Just an officer stopping two people on a city-centre street in the small hours, and one of them had a gun. Nottinghamshire Police say the firearm has since been recovered — photographs from the scene show what looks like a sawn-off shotgun lying on the tarmac — but the fact it was there at all, on Angel Row of all places, is what has shaken the city today.

What happened on Angel Row at 4.50am

Here is what the force has confirmed. Shortly before 4.50am BST, the officer approached two suspects on Angel Row, a street of shops and restaurants in the heart of Nottingham. During the encounter he was shot. Members of the public rushed to his aid before emergency crews arrived — one of the few bright notes in a grim story. He was taken to hospital with a wound to his foot, where he remains in a stable condition.

Angel Row is closed. A large cordon is in place across Angel Row and St James's Street, and forensic officers spent Sunday morning combing the pavement for evidence. Detectives confirmed a firearm has been recovered and is being forensically examined. The two suspects are described only as a man and a woman; both fled immediately after the shooting.

The manhunt: two suspects on the run

Sky News correspondent Shamaan Freeman-Powell, reporting from inside the cordon this afternoon, said it is understood that Nottinghamshire Police are "aware of who these two individuals are" — though she was careful to add that the investigation is still very much live. There is a heavy police presence across the whole city centre, not just around the scene.

Assistant Chief Constable Claire Rukas struck the tone the force will want to hold all week. Calling it a "shocking incident", she said it was "a sobering reminder of the potential dangers faced by officers as they work to protect and serve the public". Her plea was direct: anyone with even the smallest scrap of information should come forward — "even the smallest bit of information could make all the difference to this investigation".

Watch: Sky News reports from the scene

Sky News was on the ground in Nottingham within hours. You can watch their report below.

A city responds: "extremely rare" but deeply felt

Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome wrote on X that her thoughts were with the officer and his family after a "truly shocking incident", wishing him a full and speedy recovery. The Police Federation of England and Wales called the shooting "a stark reminder of the dangers police officers face every day while protecting the public", adding that officers' courage "must never be taken for granted". Council leader Neghat Khan said she was "deeply shocked and saddened", insisting every available resource is being deployed to keep the city safe.

The police's own reassurance is the line that matters most for anyone in Nottingham tonight: incidents of this nature are extremely rare, and there is no information to suggest a wider threat to the public. That should land — but you only have to look at the cordon to feel why the city won't quite relax until both suspects are in custody.

What happens next

Detectives are reviewing CCTV and appealing for dashcam and phone footage from around the Angel Row area in the early hours of Sunday morning. Anyone with information is asked to call 101, quoting incident 106 of 18 October 2026. The officer's colleagues will be back on the same streets tonight — and that's the part of this story nobody should miss. The job doesn't stop for a gunshot.

Sources

#Nottingham shooting#police officer shot#Angel Row#Nottinghamshire Police#Claire Rukas#Nottingham manhunt#UK crime

Keep Reading