Last Saturday in the late afternoon, I left home to attend the funeral of a dear uncle who had died aged 92. I took the train, as I often do, from Tulse Hill train station, in South London with my seven-year-old son.
He insisted on going into the local shops to buy snacks to eat along the way. With crisps and sweets in hand we headed to the station and caught the 17:08 train.
Less than an hour later, a young man was murdered, stabbed to death, by the exact same row of shops where my son had just been skipping through the aisles looking for sweet treats.
The victim has been named by police as Last Saturday in the late afternoon, I left home to attend the funeral of a dear uncle who had died aged 92. I took the train, as I often do, from Tulse Hill train station, in South London with my seven-year-old son.
He insisted on going into the local shops to buy snacks to eat along the way. With crisps and sweets in hand we headed to the station and caught the 17:08 train.
Less than an hour later, a young man was murdered, stabbed to death, by the exact same row of shops where my son had just been skipping through the aisles looking for sweet treats.
The victim has been named by police as Filipe Oliveira. He was just 20 years old. His family are, of course, devastated.
We don’t live in a war zone. Yet young people continue to be killed on a regular basis. And what’s worse is how desensitised society seems to have become to news like this. It now seems to be an accepted part of life in our big cities.
It’s horribly surreal to be in the vicinity of where someone has been murdered. But it’s not a first for me. Where I lived before, I regularly walked past two shrines to murder victims on the school run.
Decayed flowers, extinguished candles and in one case some forlorn looking teddy bears marked the spot where these young people had taken their last breath.In most of these cases the victims were killed by knives. Yet as the Mirror pointed out yesterday, zombie knives and machetes remain readily available despite five Home Secretaries promising to ban them. That MUST finally happen now.
We don’t yet know what type of knife was used to take Filipe’s life but analysis of murders in London in 2019/2020 showed machetes and outdoor hunting/combat knives were the most commonly used weapons.
Since Home Secretary Theresa May first promised to introduce the ban in 2016, more than 173 youths have been fatally stabbed. Put another way, that’s the size of a large secondary school year group.
Few areas seem to be getting a grip of the issue. The most sensible approach I’ve seen was taken in Scotland where the Government decided to treat knife crime as a public health issue. After adopting this new approach in 2005, of the 35 deaths in 2017, none were in Scotland. It’s this type of thinking we need in England, especially in the big cities. Mayor Sadiq Khan began a similar scheme in London in 2018 but it’s a treatment which takes time to bear fruit.
I bet the authorities would take more action if young people were being killed by some new virus. How many more people have to die before the Government finally do something about it?. He was just 20 years old. His family are, of course, devastated.
We don’t live in a war zone. Yet young people continue to be killed on a regular basis. And what’s worse is how desensitised society seems to have become to news like this. It now seems to be an accepted part of life in our big cities.
It’s horribly surreal to be in the vicinity of where someone has been murdered. But it’s not a first for me. Where I lived before, I regularly walked past two shrines to murder victims on the school run.
Decayed flowers, extinguished candles and in one case some forlorn looking teddy bears marked the spot where these young people had taken their last breath.
In most of these cases the victims were killed by knives. Yet as the Mirror pointed out yesterday, zombie knives and machetes remain readily available despite five Home Secretaries promising to ban them. That MUST finally happen now.
We don’t yet know what type of knife was used to take Filipe’s life, but analysis of murders in London in 2019/2020 showed machetes and outdoor hunting/combat knives were the most commonly used weapons.
Since Home Secretary Theresa May first promised to introduce the ban in 2016, more than 173 youths have been fatally stabbed. Put another way, that’s the size of a large secondary school year group.
Few areas seem to be getting a grip of the issue. The most sensible approach I’ve seen was taken in Scotland where the Government decided to treat knife crime as a public health issue. After adopting this new approach in 2005, of the 35 deaths in 2017, none were in Scotland. It’s this type of thinking we need in England, especially in the big cities. Mayor Sadiq Khan began a similar scheme in London in 2018 but it’s a treatment which takes time to bear fruit.
I bet the authorities would take more action if young people were being killed by some new virus. How many more people have to die before the Government finally do something about it?
