A shopkeeper who witnessed a mass brawl which ended with one teenager being stabbed multiple times and another having a corrosive substance thrown in his face in multicultural Birmingham said he was “used to” such scenes.
Parkash Singh was serving in Mahli’s Supermarket when a mass brawl broke out at the counter. He said the teens involved were all carrying kitchen knives, with one 17-year-old being stabbed “repeatedly in the back”, the Birmingham Mail reports.
Seconds later, another teenager had a corrosive substance thrown in his face outside a nearby chip shop.
“I wasn’t scared. I’m used to it,” Mr. Singh said nonchalantly. “This is a very violent place.”
The 58-year-old said the young men were all black, appeared to be aged between 18 to 20, had their faces covered, and wore hooded tops.
The brawl comes just days after 35-year-old Mustafa Hassan was arrested on suspicion of murder following a fatal stabbing elsewhere in the city, and less than a week after a man was imprisoned for stabbing a 15-year-old in the head and neck and a woman in the nose, jaw, and head in seemingly random attacks.
Birmingham is the second biggest city in the United Kingdom by population and one of its most multicultural, with a very large migrant and migrant-descended population.
Its rapid demographic transformation, coupled with the deindustrialisation brought on by the globalisation process, has led to significant problems with crime and social cohesion, which will be the subject of an upcoming documentary by soap star and documentarian Ross Kemp.
Kemp, most famous for his role as TV hardman Grant Mitchell in the long-running BBC series EastEnders, revealed he had to “wear the same body armour that I wore in Syria on the streets of Birmingham” while shooting the programme, which will see him follow armed police and counter-terrorism units in the course of duty.
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