Two schoolboys aged 14 and 15 have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 14-year-old boy was repeatedly stabbed with a “10-inch kitchen knife” in North London on Sunday.
The teen suspects were arrested in the early hours of Monday morning with the Metropolitan Police Force confirming that an 11-year-old boy who had been arrested on Sunday following the attack had been released from custody, with no further action being taken.
Police were called to Fairbridge Road, Islington, North London, on Sunday, July 1st, at 6:50pm following reports that a boy had been stabbed following a fight between two underaged males and two men.
The victim, found with “multiple stab wounds”, was airlifted to an East London hospital where he remains in serious but stable condition.
Witnesses speaking to the Evening Standard described a frenzied attack on the busy street, expressing their amazement of such young children brandishing knives, with a resident describing one as no taller than her nine-year-old son.
Local resident and journalist Amina Taylor, 40, told the evening London newspaper she saw one young male running down the road with a “gleaming” knife before stabbing the 14-year-old in the stomach.
Ms Taylor described seeing a few minutes later another young boy running towards the altercation carrying what was described as a kitchen knife, with onlookers pleading for the attack to stop.
“We could all see the knife in his hand. It was that big,” Ms Taylor said.
“You could hear the screams of ‘No, stop it, don’t do anything, don’t be stupid’ and he went for [one of the adults] first but then he was kind of swinging wildly and then he just thrust the knife into the stomach of the teenager,” she added.
Local shopkeeper Abdullah Ozcelik was also shocked by the age of those allegedly involved in the attack, saying: “These people are just little children. It should be unbelievable. It should not happen to anyone.”
Fairbridge Road is just off of Holloway Road – a notorious hotspot for moped gang robberies, with 111 robberies last year resulting in a single arrest, with some robbers appearing as young as 15.
Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan — under whose watch youth homicide has jumped 70 percent and knife crime has increased by nearly one-third — said of the stabbing: “Incidents like this have a devastating impact on families and our communities and we need to send the message that they will not be tolerated.
“Politicians, the police and all Londoners must unite in saying it is never acceptable to carry a knife – and it does not make you safer.”
Khan u-turned on his position on police stop-and-search — which he and then Home Secretary Theresa May objected to on grounds of alleged racial profiling — in January in an attempt to crack down on the city’s knife crime epidemic.
There have been more than 80 killings in London this year, the majority of which were fatal stabbings.