On the afternoon of Friday 16 May 2026, Yves Sakila — a 35-year-old Congolese man who had made his home in Ireland for over two decades — died on a busy Dublin shopping street after being restrained by security personnel during an alleged shoplifting incident. He had been held face-down on the ground for close to five minutes before Gardaí arrived. Almost immediately after they applied handcuffs, officers realised he was unresponsive. CPR was performed at the scene. He was taken to the Mater Hospital and pronounced dead.

Gardaí are now investigating whether the restraint itself contributed to his death. The case has been independently referred to Fiosrú, Ireland’s Police Ombudsman. A postmortem has been conducted, with further analysis ongoing. No conclusions have been reached.Full details of the incident as reported by The Irish Times can be read here.

This article does not seek to prejudge those investigations or the individuals involved. What it does seek to do is address a set of questions that every security professional working in the UK right now should be asking themselves honestly — because the gap between a routine shift and a coroner’s inquest can be uncomfortably small.

Why a Dublin Incident Matters to UK Security Professionals

Ireland operates under its own legal framework, and the investigation there will proceed under Irish law. But the underlying issues — what constitutes reasonable force, the physiology of restraint-related death, and the personal legal exposure of the individuals involved — are not unique to any jurisdiction. They are the same questions that have surfaced in UK coroner’s courts, Crown Court criminal trials, and SIA licence revocation proceedings for decades.

The security industry in the UK is not immune to incidents of this kind. Restraint-related deaths have occurred here, and they have resulted in criminal convictions, licence revocations, and civil claims. The Dublin case is a visible and high-profile reminder of what is at stake every time a security professional decides to take someone to the ground.

The Specific Danger of Prone Restraint

Footage of the Henry Street incident — widely circulated on social media — showed Sakila held face-down on the ground, with at least one person applying pressure to his head and neck area, while others restrained his body and legs. This type of hold is categorised in UK security training as high-risk and is not an approved technique for sustained use.

The reason is positional asphyxia. When a person is held prone — face down, with body weight or manual pressure on their back, chest or neck — their ability to breathe can be severely compromised. The diaphragm cannot work efficiently. The airway is under pressure. Oxygen delivery to the brain begins to fail. Death can follow within minutes, and it can happen with very little visible warning.

The risk is compounded significantly in certain circumstances that security staff regularly encounter: where the subject has been physically exerting themselves, where alcohol or drugs are involved, where the person is overweight, or where they are in a state of extreme agitation or distress. Any one of those factors raises the danger substantially. In combination, they can be fatal.

UK security training is explicit about this. The SIA’s licensing criteria require that Door Supervisor and Security Guard courses cover positional asphyxia as a core topic, and that physical intervention units teach approved holds specifically designed to maintain a subject’s airway. Prone restraint with weight on the back is not among them for sustained use — and continued restraint after a person has stopped resisting is a significant departure from those standards.

The Law on Reasonable Force in the UK

Security personnel in England and Wales operate under the same legal framework as ordinary members of the public when it comes to the use of force. Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 permits the use of reasonable force to prevent crime or make a lawful arrest. Section 24A of PACE extends a limited power of arrest to any person, including security staff, for indictable offences.

The test of whether force was reasonable is an objective one. It is assessed not by what the security operative believed at the time, but by what a reasonable person — informed by the facts as they were — would consider proportionate. A court applying this test will have the benefit of CCTV footage, witness accounts, medical evidence, and time. The security operative had seconds. That gap is where careers, freedoms, and licences are lost.

Force that might be lawful at the moment of initial restraint can become unlawful within seconds if the threat it was responding to has ended. The moment a subject stops resisting, the legal justification for maintaining that level of physical control diminishes rapidly. Continuing to apply the same force — or greater force — after resistance has ceased is the point at which reasonable becomes unreasonable, and restraint becomes assault.

Recognising the Signs That a Restraint Is Becoming a Medical Emergency

One of the most important practical skills covered in SIA training is the ability to recognise when a restraint has crossed from a security situation into a medical one. The warning signs are not always dramatic, and in the heat of an incident they can be easy to miss or misinterpret. They include:

Breathing becoming laboured, shallow or irregular
The subject going limp or suddenly ceasing to resist
Changes in skin colour, particularly around the lips and face
Unresponsiveness to verbal commands or pain stimulus
Any sign of loss of consciousness

When any of these signs appear, the appropriate response is immediate: change the position, call 999, place the subject in the recovery position if it is safe to do so, and begin first aid if trained to do so. Every second of delay in recognising and responding to a medical emergency in a restraint situation increases the risk of a fatal outcome.

The College of Policing guidance on restraint is unambiguous on this point: the moment a subject appears to be in medical distress, restraint must give way to care. The two cannot coexist.

Personal Criminal Liability: Understanding What You’re Exposed To

Security work is one of the few civilian occupations where the actions of an individual employee can directly result in serious criminal charges against that individual — not just their employer. This is something that anyone entering the industry should understand clearly, and something that those already in it should never lose sight of.

Where a restraint results in death, potential charges against the individuals involved include gross negligence manslaughter, where the conduct falls so far below the standard of a reasonable person as to constitute a crime, and unlawful act manslaughter, where the death results from an unlawful physical act even if death was not intended. Neither requires intent to harm. Both carry custodial sentences.

Beyond criminal proceedings, the SIA has the power to revoke a licence on the grounds of conduct incompatible with the standards the industry requires. Revocation has followed serious incidents even where criminal prosecution did not result in a conviction. An SIA licence revocation effectively ends a career in licensed security work.

Employer liability insurance covers the company. It does not protect you as an individual from criminal prosecution or licence revocation.

What This Means in Practice: A Checklist for Security Teams

The operational lessons here are not complicated. They are, however, worth treating as a checklist rather than background knowledge — because background knowledge has a way of not being available when adrenaline takes over.

For individual security operatives:

Know the approved physical intervention techniques from your SIA training — and if they have faded, get refresher training
Understand positional asphyxia: what it is, why prone restraint is dangerous, and what the warning signs look like
Know exactly when to call 999 — err on the side of earlier, not later
Document incidents thoroughly and immediately: time, location, who was present, what was said, what actions were taken and when
Remember that shoplifting is a property offence. The proportionality requirement under the law reflects this

For security managers and venue operators:

Review your written restraint policy. If prone restraint is not explicitly prohibited beyond the initial seconds of gaining control, it should be
Audit when your team last completed hands-on physical intervention training. Qualification-level training may be years old
Ensure every operative on your team can describe, without prompting, the medical escalation triggers that should end a restraint and initiate emergency medical response
Consider whether first aid training is current across the team — a basic requirement that is sometimes allowed to lapse

If refresher training is overdue for you or your team, SIA Top-Up Refresher Training is available for both Door Supervisors and Security Guards and can be completed in a single day. It is substantially cheaper, and considerably less disruptive, than a coroner’s inquest.

A Proportionate Response to a Proportionate Threat

The law governing the use of force is built on a single foundational concept: proportionality. The force used must be proportionate to the threat faced. A suspected shoplifter presents a property risk. They do not present a threat to life. No interpretation of proportionality — legal, professional, or moral — can make a five-minute prone restraint of a suspected shoplifter reasonable.

This is not a comfortable conclusion to sit with if you work in retail security and face shoplifting incidents regularly. But it is the conclusion the law reaches, and it is the standard the SIA expects every licensed operative to uphold.

The investigations in Dublin will run their course. But the questions they raise about restraint training, proportionality, and the recognition of medical emergencies during physical interventions are live questions for the UK security industry right now — not at the conclusion of an inquest, not after the next incident, but today.

Keep Your Training Current

Physical intervention skills are not like theoretical knowledge — they deteriorate without practice. The techniques covered in an SIA course taken two or three years ago will not be reliably available under pressure unless they have been revisited and rehearsed. That is the nature of skills-based training, and it is why the SIA requires refresher training as part of licence renewal.

Don’t wait until renewal is due. If there is any uncertainty about whether your restraint techniques and your recognition of restraint-related medical emergencies are up to standard, address it now.

View available SIA refresher training courses at Get Licensed →

This article is intended for informational purposes. The investigation into the death of Yves Sakila is ongoing and no conclusions have been reached regarding the conduct of any individual. Factual details of the Dublin incident are drawn from reporting by The Irish Times. Legal references in this article apply to England and Wales; provisions differ in Scotland and Northern Ireland.