The emotional tribute paid today by the sister of the 16-year old Harry Pitman to her “hero” brother following his fatal stabbing on Primrose Hill as he waited to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks is, regrettably, just the latest illustration of the devastating trauma inflicted on families by London’s knife crime problem, but should add urgency to the need to find solutions nonetheless.
In a social media post, Tayla Pitman said Harry was a “good boy” who was “not in any way involved in gangs”, and it certainly appears from the evidence of the Met, which had received no intelligence of violence in the park that night, that her dead brother paid the price of the normalisation of knife carrying among other young Londoners, which seems to have turned a minor altercation into a fatal tragedy.
