Gun crime in London is still “incredibly rare” and “not out of control”, the Home Secretary insisted on Friday, as a schoolgirl was fighting for her life in hospital following a shooting in Hackney.
James Cleverly told the Standard he was receiving consistent “updates” on the case while out on the general election campaign trail.
He said his thoughts were with the nine-year-old child and the three men injured in the drive-by attack on a Dalston restaurant on Wednesday evening.
“I have been receiving reports on the investigation and I will continue to do so,” he said.
“Of course our thoughts are with those people who were hurt, including the little girl. It is still very much an evolving situation.”
Asked if the recorded 20 per cent leap in gun crimes in the capital last year suggested the problem was getting “out of control”, Mr Cleverly added: “That’s not true. Thankfully shootings are incredibly rare.
“The situation we saw in Hackney is very very distressing but shootings across the UK are incredibly rare and I pay tribute to the law enforcement agencies, particularly those who are preventing guns and ammunition coming into the UK.
“But when it does happen, of course we take it incredibly seriously as we will do in this situation.”
The schoolgirl is still in a “critical condition” after being hit in the drive-by shooting, the Met Police confirmed on Friday morning.
She was one of four people gunned down shortly after 9pm.
Officers described her as an “innocent victim” who was having dinner with her family.
Three men who were sitting outside the restaurant — aged 26, 37 and 42 — are stable in hospital.
One of them faces “potentially faces life-changing injuries”, Chief Superintendent James Conway said.
Witnesses saw a gunman on a motorbike, which police believe was stolen, spray bullets in the direction of the diners in the Evin Turkish restaurant before speeding away down Kingsland High Street.
There have been no arrests and inquiries continue, a Met Police spokesman added.
It follows the fatal shooting of Jazmel Patterson-Low in Lambeth earlier this month.
The 26-year-old was gunned down on the Westbury Estate and died half an hour after a car dropped him off at hospital at about 2.30am on May 11.
Knife and gun crime in London both leapt by 20 per cent last year, official figures show.
There were 14,626 knife offences, an average of 40 a day, and there was also a significant increase in gun crimes with 1,208 offences in 2023, up by nearly 200 on the 1,010 recorded by police a year earlier.
