Ana Demarr, now 28, was one of many young graduates who moved to London for work after university. She moved into a six-bedroom house in Rotherhithe in March 2022, unaware that a future housemate would become her stalker and would later be killed by armed police.
Less than two years later, in the early hours of January 30, 2024, her stalker, Bryce Hodgson, 30, arrived at the shared flat armed with a loaded crossbow, a sword, and a hatchet. He tried to break down Ana's bedroom door, and when armed police arrived, he was shot twice and died at the scene. The police watchdog later found the shooting to be “necessary and proportionate”.
Stalking began with rejection
Bryce Hodgson moved into the same house in August 2022. In January 2023, when Ana was 25, he told her he liked her. She responded with a clear “thank you, but no”.
Bryce began calling her repeatedly. By April 2023, his behaviour escalated to trying to open her locked bedroom door while she was inside. Ana said she did not call police right away because she thought nobody would listen without “foolproof evidence”. She also worried the situation might “get worse” if she reported it.
“I know there are people that would have moved out of their house at the first sign of something bad happening and it should have stopped, but that should not be the way these things are done,” she said. Ana added: “I keep hearing about violence being done to women and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better in terms of the response of the police to it. I hear cases like Sarah Everard or other similar cases and I don’t think people take it seriously.”
Police delay and eviction notice
The final straw came when Bryce went into her room while the door was open, and she had to shut the door in his face. She went to the police, who found disturbing text messages he had sent her that she had not opened on her phone.
She said she was told he would be arrested that day and was advised to stay at a friend’s house for the night. Ana ended up sleeping on friends’ couches for two months while waiting for his arrest. Her landlord had served him an eviction notice, but they told her they were legally obliged to give him two months’ notice. She was offered another address by the estate agents, but she did not consider it an option as it was very close to the stalker’s address.
Ana said she thinks it is wrong that the “burden” is on women to “change your name and address and go far away”. She said: “It was very absurd that I couldn’t be living safely in the house I was paying rent in, but the thing that was the most absurd thing out of all of this is, why do I have to move out?”
Ana also felt she had to “constantly” ask police to “do something about it”. “I think whatever happened in the month after the arrest warrant shouldn’t have happened, they should have just come and served it,” she said.
Sentencing and fatal shooting
Bryce Hodgson was arrested in June 2023 and pleaded guilty to stalking involving serious alarm or distress. He was sentenced shortly afterwards. Ana said: “The sentencing hearing that he had in 2023 didn’t end up with him being put in prison because he had no prior convictions and the only thing I contributed to that was something in my victim statement was he needs some mental support, and by that meaning he doesn’t have a sane mind. If you put him in prison, fine, if you don’t, fine, but if you don’t fix whatever is in his head, it’s just going to keep happening.”
On January 30, 2024, Hodgson arrived at the flat armed with the weapons. After hearing him try to break down the door, Ana went into her flatmate’s room. The stalker then tried to break down Ana’s bedroom door, which she had locked behind her. On realising she was not there, he came up to the room Ana was in and started to cut around the door’s lock. Armed police arrived, and the stalker was shot. He died at the scene.
The police watchdog found the shooting “necessary and proportionate”. Officers first tried to negotiate with him, but he threatened police and said he intended to kill someone. When he pointed the crossbow at firearms officers, he was shot twice. The watchdog also examined how Hodgson had been managed after his June 2023 conviction, including his bail conditions and electronic tag, but found no evidence of safeguarding concerns that should have been raised at the time.
Impact on daily life
Ana considers herself “lucky”, as “a lot of these things end with the woman getting either killed or seriously injured in some way”. She said: “For me, nothing happened to me apart from all the psychological distress and having to move outside my house. I was very lucky, especially in the night where he came over to the house and stuff, but there’s so many people that aren’t.”
Ana still lives in London but has chosen to live alone rather than with other people. While she “would like to think lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place”, she is not going to take the risk. “Even after I moved out of that house, I moved into another place with strangers and that ended up being bad as well. Nobody tried to kill me that time, but I don’t want to go to a place every day and feel like you aren’t safe,” she said.
She said she would like to move in with friends at some point “because London rent is expensive”. On living with strangers in a women-only house, she said: “I was thinking I should just move in a house with all girls and that should be fun, which even then I’m like, what if they know a guy and the guy comes? I just start making all the most insane scenarios of bad things that could theoretically happen.”
Even when she leaves the house, she no longer feels safe. Ana said: “I was never very conscious about violence that could happen to me, because I was lucky that it never happened to me before in this way. So now I’m more like, maybe I don’t go to that place because what if something bad could happen? So I’m definitely more conscious of that.”
Her heightened awareness did help her get a friend out of a bad situation. She said that if there was one thing she wanted people to get from her story, it was to “help the people you know when they mention something dodgy happening”. “Maybe the police will help. But not always, and not always on time, and I think a lot more people should be more active to help others they see in a bad situation,” she said.
Ana feels she “wasted energy” dealing with the situation and wonders what would have happened to her social life or career if it had not happened. “All this time that is lost because of it, it’s not just a crime happens to you and so you go to the police. No, like, your entire life is disrupted,” she said. Ana has written a short book about her experience called Bywater under the Bridge: Live from London, available on her Substack.
