A partygoer battling to keep his best friend conscious after he was repeatedly stabbed was bundled away by police who initially thought he was the attacker, an inquest heard.
Nathaniel Van Bois was trying to save hospital worker Lamar Stewart, 21, after he was stabbed four times in the chest when a house birthday party spiralled out of control.
But police officers mistakenly thought he was involved and was handcuffed and kept away as paramedics tried to save his dying friend.
Mr Stewart, a clerk at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital in London, died despite paramedics and an air ambulance doctor treating him in the street for nearly an hour, Poplar Coroner’s Court heard.
He had been repeatedly stabbed by Salman Ahmed in Bow, east London in September 2017 and Ahmed branded as “extremely violent” was jailed for a minimum of 22 years last June.
The inquest heard news of the party quickly across social media that lead to a large groups of youths amassing on a residential street.
Mr Stewart was knifed when two groups of youths – from east and south London – clashed at around 2.30am.
He was chased down the road by men armed with knives before being repeatedly stabbed and kicked
Giving evidence Mr Van Bois said he had known Mr Stewart since primary school and they were best friends.
But at the party Mr Stewart was wrongly accused of stabbing another man.
Mr Van Bois said: “I became aware something was wrong when there was a fight in the back garden.
“The boy that said he got stabbed assumed that Lamar did it, that’s when he ran up the road, when the altercation happened.
“He then got stabbed and I went to him, I held him, he was in the middle of the road.
“I saw him getting stabbed.
“I was trying to keep him awake, trying to keep him conscious, there was a lot of blood.
“Someone called the ambulance, the police came; they both roughly came at the same time.
“Police took me off him and I tried to go back to him. They wouldn’t let me.
“They then put me in handcuffs. They arrested me for a bit of weed rather than attending to the situation.
“The only treatment that I saw was when the ambulance people went to go and help him.”
He added: “Police should have came to the situation earlier – there was a lot of conflict they should have attended to.
”The police could have just not arrested me, but they did. They could have just came there to do what they came to do.”
The inquest heard the officers first on the scene gave first aid to Mr Stewart, of Mitcham, south London, who left a twin sister, before paramedics took over.
But he died in hospital at 4.50am.
However one neighbour told the inquest: “Lamar was laying on his front.
“I could see a stab wound in his back, his leg and elsewhere.
“A number of coppers were tussling with Nathaniel and neighbours had come out with towels.
“I was on the phone to a medic and calling across to the police what to do.
“Two coppers and my wife were together on the floor. It didn’t feel like they were completely in control.
“I don’t think they knew what they were doing.
“I don’t know if they were junior officers or what, my wife sort of took over.
“It wasn’t obvious what his injuries were at all.
“By the time they got him into the ambulance he was stark naked.
“They were trying to find where the wounds were, they lifted his clothing.”
PC Todd Farrell, who was first to arrive told the hearing: “We attended a call that 50 or so were fighting.
“I saw Lamar lying on the floor with Nathaniel on top of him, normally behaviour in my experience told me that Lamar could have been on drugs.
“He was sitting up and flailing his arms around.
“There was previous information that a fight was taking place.
“It looked like Nathanial was grabbing his shirt and shaking him. It looked like he was attacking him.
“I later found that this was not the case, but at the time I did not know.”
Paramedic Simon Hanson said: “There was a stab wound to the left shoulder blades and on his back; there was another on the back of the thigh that was bleeding.”
He explained Mr Stewart was initially put into the back of an ambulance but when an air ambulance doctor arrived he was moved back into the road so emergency procedures to inflate his lungs could be performed.
A post-mortem gave cause of death as a stab wound to the chest.