Category Archives: Knife crime

Parental failure and gaps in the law: why the Southport atrocity was preventable

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After nine weeks of inquiry evidence, a picture has emerged of systemic breakdown and poor information sharing

Of all the professionals who studied Axel Rudakubana before his murderous attack in Southport last summer, the notes of a rookie police officer in 2019 may be the most prescient.

The actions of Rudakubana, then aged 13, showed “potential for huge escalation”, wrote PC Alex McNamee after spending just 20 minutes with the teenager when he admitted taking a knife to school to attack a bully. The risk, he wrote, was “high”.

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Man jailed for at least 23 years for murdering Syrian boy in Huddersfield

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Alfie Franco, 20, stabbed Ahmad Al Ibrahim after taking ‘petty exception’ to teenager brushing past his girlfriend

A man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years for murdering a teenage Syrian refugee after he brushed past his girlfriend in Huddersfield town centre.

Leeds crown court heard how Alfie Franco, 20, stabbed Ahmad Al Ibrahim, 16, shortly after Ibrahim brushed past Franco’s girlfriend in April. He was found guilty of murder on Thursday.

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‘They rewrite the ending’: the knife crime play with its own outreach scheme

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Sam Edmunds hopes to help young people with his play The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return

Growing up in Luton in the late 90s and early 00s, the playwright Sam Edmunds witnessed an abundance of knife violence that has stayed with him to this day.

“Me and my friends had knives pulled on us on numerous occasions. We once saw someone being chased with a machete at the back of the field by our school. In drama class, I remember a boy went into his bag to get his notebook out and a massive knife fell out. A boy in my brother’s year was stabbed over 10 times on a night out.”

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Man jailed for at least 40 years for sword murder of London boy Daniel Anjorin

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Marcus Arduini Monzo, 37, sentenced for killing 14-year-old and attempted murder of three others in Hainault

A man has been jailed for at least 40 years for the “wicked” murder of the schoolboy Daniel Anjorin during a 20-minute rampage in east London.

Marcus Arduini Monzo, 37, fatally slashed Daniel with a samurai sword minutes after the 14-year-old left his home in Hainault on 30 April last year.

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Youth workers in London custody centres stop 90% reoffending, says report

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Scheme aims to exploit ‘teachable moment’, when someone is wavering between criminality and turning their back on violence

A scheme aiming to turn children arrested for violence away from crime has claimed staggering success, with up to nine out of 10 diverted from further offending, according to a report.

Under the scheme, which is funded by London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), special youth workers are placed in police custody centres across the capital.

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Police were ‘consulted’ over early prison release scheme, says Ministry of Justice

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Mark Rowley, Met commissioner, had said plans for England and Wales were made ‘without any analysis of the impact on policing’

The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has hit back at the UK’s most senior police officer in a row over the impact of allowing thousands of criminals to serve their sentences in the community instead of being sent to jail.

The Ministry of Justice insisted on Wednesday that officials “consulted with police” including the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, over proposed changes to sentencing policies introduced to ease prison overcrowding.

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Atalanta fan stabbed to death in clashes with Inter supporters, police confirm

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  • Male in his late teens arrested over incident, say police
  • Violence ‘must never happen again’, says Gasperini

A 26-year-old fan of Serie A side Atalanta was stabbed to death during clashes between Atalanta and Inter supporters in the northern city of Bergamo, Italy’s police said.

The groups of supporters clashed in a pub in Bergamo on Saturday night after one of the Inter supporters chanted provocatively, the head of the carabinieri office in Bergamo, Carmelo Beringheli, said.

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Retailers to be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives

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New raft of measures labelled Ronan’s law include tougher sentences for those caught selling blades to under-18s

Retailers will be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives, and those caught selling blades to under-18s will face tougher sentences under a new raft of measures to clamp down on young people’s access to weapons labelled Ronan’s law.

Named after Ronan Kanda, the 16-year-old killed in Wolverhampton in 2022 by a teenager carrying a 22in ninja blade he had ordered online, the new laws are part of a raft of anti-knife crime plans announced by the government on Wednesday.

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Afghan man arrested after deadly knife attack in German park

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemns ‘act of terror’ in Aschaffenburg that killed two people including toddler

A 28-year-old Afghan man has been arrested after a knife attack in a park in the German city of Aschaffenburg that killed two people, including a toddler, in what the country’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, condemned as an “act of terror”.

With a month left in a campaign for snap elections dominated by debate on immigration and asylum policy, Scholz demanded authorities “explain immediately why the assailant was even still in Germany”.

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PMQs live: Starmer to face Badenoch after announcing plan to end teenage access to knives online in wake of Southport attack

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PM to face Tory leader following decision to announce tougher checks for people buying knives online

A new online train ticket retailer backed by the UK government is to be created, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced, with the aim of simplifying the process of buying tickets from different rail operators. Joanna Partridge has the story.

PMQs is almost with us.

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Southport killer will be treated as a terrorist in jail, Yvette Cooper tells MPs – as it happened

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Home secretary also says inquiry into the attack will cover wider threat posed by youth violence

Starmer says nothing will be off the table in the inquiry.

There are also questions about the accountability of the Whitehall and Westminster system – a system that is far too often driven by circling the institutional wagons, that does not react until justice is either hard won by campaigners, or until appalling tragedies like this [take place].

Time and again we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it. I’m angry about it.

There are also bigger questions, questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online.

Because you can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms, but with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video – videos that, in some cases, are never taken down,

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‘She stood up for her friend’: caring teenager’s death shocked Croydon

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Elianne Andam was stabbed to death by friend’s ex-boyfriend Hassan Sentamu after dispute outside shopping centre

Elianne Andam was known, above all, for her caring nature. During her memorial service, her father recounted an evening when she found six snails flushed out on the pavement due to the rain. She picked up the “slimy creatures” and moved them out of harm’s way so they would not die prematurely. “Oh, the irony,” her father said.

On 27 September 2023, Andam stood up for her friend, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend. They met Hassan Sentamu, who was 17 at the time, to exchange items. Her friend handed a bag to Sentamu but he failed to hand over her items, including a teddy bear she wanted back.

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German border plan to stop ‘irregular migration’ unacceptable, says Tusk

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Polish PM calls for urgent consultations with European neighbours over controls he says will break European law

The Polish government is accusing Germany of acting unilaterally and unfairly over its “unacceptable” plans to introduce temporary controls into in the passport-free Schengen zone at all the country’s nine land borders, in what Warsaw says is a contravention of European law.

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said Germany had introduced a “de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale” after the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, announced Berlin’s decision to confront what she called “irregular migration” by introducing spot controls along Germany’s 2,300-mile (3,700km) frontier after a recent spate of suspected Islamist attacks.

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Solingen stabbing comes amid steep rise in knife crime in Germany

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Politicans have long been calling for stricter weapons laws while others say social issues need to be addressed, after three killed at festival on Friday

Germany has experienced a steep rise in knife violence in recent years, and the mass fatal stabbing in the western city of Solingen will compound the pressure on the government to crack down on the problem, officials and analysts said.

Security authorities say attacks with knives are particularly concentrated in city centres and at railway stations, leading the country’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, this month to call for restrictions on the weapons in public spaces, days before the assault that claimed the lives of three people at a festival in Solingen.

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Manchester youth who delivered ‘fatal blow’ to Kennie Carter detained for 16 years

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Three others sentenced to up to five years in young offender institution for revenge attack against teenager

Four teenagers have been sentenced for killing a 16-year-old boy out of revenge in a fatal attack where a single stab “pierced his heart”.

Kennie Carter died after being stabbed in the chest once in Stretford, Greater Manchester, on the evening of 22 January 2022.

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UK general election live: Labour suspends candidate Kevin Craig over Gambling Commission probe

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Party says it acted after being contacted by the regulator about the candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich

All along the course of the Thames, turning north, meandering south, passing through locks, historic landmarks, Richmond and Kew, swelling beneath the House of Commons with the turning tide, and on to Docklands and beyond – concern for the health of the Thames has led many other ordinary people, who live, work or play on the water, to take up the fight for the health of the river.

The last 15 years of decline in rivers suggests they have much to do. In 2009, a year before the Conservatives first took power in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a quarter of English rivers were judged as being of good ecological standard, a marker which examines the flow, habitat and biological quality; by 2022 not one river was in a healthy state.

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Young people buying large knives on Telegram and TikTok, police say

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Commander says authorities scrambling to keep up with supply trends as knife crimes rise

Young people are using sites such as Telegram and TikTok to buy large knives for use in attacks and intimidation, with some linked to Britain’s drug wars, police said.

Stephen Clayman, national lead for knife crime for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, made it clear on Tuesday that police want tougher action after a 7% year-on-year rise in knife offences, with a 20% rise in knife-point robberies.

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Policing minister calls for officers to conduct more stop and searches

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Chris Philp says police should not ‘tiptoe around using these powers in an aim to appease’ despite concerns over racial bias

Police officers must carry out more stop and searches to address knife crime as the tactic is “not used nearly often enough”, according to the policing minister.

Chris Philp said that police forces cannot afford to “tiptoe around using these powers in an aim to appease”.

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‘It’s on our doorstep’: Bristol’s fearful parents seek answers after three knife deaths in three weeks

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As teenage victims are mourned across the English city, some believe the return of youth centres would keep children safer

Terre Baptiste has been checking her teenage son’s whereabouts compulsively since a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed two weeks ago in a park a mile away from their home in the east of Bristol.

“It is very worrying,” says Baptiste, in her living room. “Bristol isn’t a perfect city. But there weren’t stabbings one after the other. It was few and far between. Now it is on our doorstep.”

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Family of Brianna Ghey murderer apologise and pay tribute to mother

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Scarlett Jenkinson’s relatives thank Esther Ghey for ‘incredible selflessness and empathy towards our family’

The family of Scarlett Jenkinson, who was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years for the murder of Brianna Ghey, have said they are “truly sorry” for the teenage killer’s “brutal” actions and paid tribute to Brianna’s mother.

Jenkinson, described by the judge as the “driving force” behind the murder, was sentenced on Friday for what the Crown Prosecution Service said was “one of the most disturbing cases” its lawyers had ever dealt with. Her accomplice, Eddie Ratcliffe, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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