A 25-year-old man has died at HMP Wandsworth, prompting the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to open its 27th investigation into a death connected to the troubled prison.
Gulwali Stanekzay died on 17 January 2026. The PPO published his name and details last week but has not yet classified the cause of death, listing the investigation as “in progress.” He is the third person to die in custody at HMP Wandsworth since Governor Andy Davy was appointed in June 2024 to reform the crisis-hit jail.
Stanekzay was serving a sentence for a violent unprovoked assault on a young woman in Harlesden. On the evening of 26 February 2023, the victim was walking home along Minet Avenue in Harlesden when Stanekzay, who was cycling past, deliberately rode into her. He then punched her repeatedly in the head and shoulder for approximately one minute before cycling away. He returned and attacked her again.
A neighbour let the woman take refuge in their home. While she was inside washing blood from her face, Stanekzay smashed a vehicle parked in the street, then attempted to kick down the neighbour’s front door, destroying a doorbell camera with a bike lock. The woman’s father arrived and was also assaulted, sustaining a black eye, broken tooth and leg injury. The woman suffered bruising across her face, head, neck, shoulders and back and required hospital treatment.
DC Jacob Eyre of the Metropolitan Police said at the time: “Stanekzay brutally attacked a lone woman in the street without any provocation. The attack was shockingly violent, and one can only imagine the terror this prolonged assault caused.”
Stanekzay pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of criminal damage at Harrow Crown Court. In July 2023, Judge Maya Sikand KC sentenced him to just under three years, comprising two and a half years for the assault plus 24 weeks for breaching a suspended sentence from a previous ABH case. The judge noted his “isolated and lonely existence” and “precarious immigration status” while sentencing him. Stanekzay had come to the UK from Afghanistan in 2016 as an unaccompanied teenager and was homeless at the time of the offence, having been evicted from an immigration hotel.
A question about his sentence
The sentencing raises an important question. Under standard release rules, prisoners serving sentences under four years are automatically released at the halfway point. A sentence of just under three years would mean automatic release at approximately 18 months, which would place his release date around January 2025, a full year before he died.
If Stanekzay had completed his criminal sentence, he may have been held under immigration detention powers due to his unresolved status. The PPO’s remit covers deaths in all forms of custody.
The 27th investigation
Stanekzay’s death brings the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s tally of investigations connected to HMP Wandsworth to 27, according to an analysis of the PPO’s database. At least five of those deaths have occurred since Davy took charge in June 2024: Warren Arter, who died in his cell in July 2024; Gurshinder Singh, who died in November 2024 shortly after release; Sidique Govinden, who died in custody in January 2025; Alex Boy, who died in April 2025 shortly after release; and now Stanekzay.
Three of those five were in-custody deaths. Two were post-release deaths, which the PPO has investigated under expanded powers introduced in 2021.
Davy inherited a prison in crisis. In May 2024, the Chief Inspector of Prisons described HMP Wandsworth as a place of “deaths, drugs and despair” and issued an Urgent Notification, the most serious warning available. An independent report that August called conditions “inhumane”. A progress review in May 2025 found only “limited and fragile” improvement, with four more deaths since the previous inspection. A PPO investigation into the death of Rajwinder Singh concluded he “would still be alive today” if sent to a different prison, after staff falsified observation records. And a coroner’s report into Patryk Gladysz found a “complete failure” of mental health provision at the jail.
The cause of Stanekzay’s death is unknown. The PPO has not classified it as self-inflicted, natural causes, or any other category. This story does not speculate on the cause. The 27 investigations and the pattern of deaths are the story.
What happens next
The PPO investigation will take several months. Its report will be published after being shared with Stanekzay’s family and after a coroner’s inquest has concluded. Previous Wandsworth investigations have taken between 12 and 18 months to reach publication.
Residents can monitor the progress of this and other investigations through the PPO’s HMP Wandsworth page, which lists all current and completed investigations.
This is the latest story in Putney.news‘ ongoing accountability series on HMP Wandsworth, which has documented the crisis at the prison since May 2024.
Other outlets have reported Stanekzay’s death with an immigration focus. This story covers the death as a prison accountability matter: a person in the state’s custody has died, and the question is what the state did or failed to do to prevent it.
