Inquest opens into death of Wigan knife attacker

An inquest has opened into the death of a convicted knifeman who lived in Wigan.

At Bolton Coroners Court, coroner Stephen Teasdale opened proceedings into the death of Nicholas Kanakis, who died on October 1, 2020 in Wigan.

In 2013, Mr Kanakis had been sentenced to nine years in prison for stabbing a neighbour and leaving the blade in his body. He denied knifing him – but was quickly caught out when police found the handle for the weapon hidden under a rug at his home.

The victim, who lived at an address opposite Kanakis’s flat in Upper Dicconson Street, suffered a punctured lung and the 8cm long blade missed his heart by a centimetre, and but for emergency surgery he would have died.

Tragically, although the victim recovered physically, he missed his wife’s funeral as he was still in hospital following surgery for his wounds.

The stabbing occurred after Mr Kanakis, who is originally from Greece, became irritated by the noise of a motorboat engine which his victim was trying to help a fellow neighbour fix ahead of a boating trip.

He approached the man to confront him about the noise and attacked him with the knife, forcing it into his ribcage before going back to his flat. He told a court that at the time he had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

A date for the full inquest hearing has not yet been set.

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