A man claiming to be an eyewitness to part of the Birmingham stabbing spree says the suspect is a “black guy” and to have seen him stab a woman “several times in the neck”.
UPDATE: West Midlands Police have now released video of “a man we want to speak to after last night’s murder and stabbings” who appears to match the eyewitness’ description:
Original report continues below.
Early eyewitness reports of a confusing night of violence in England’s second city linked the police-declared “major incident” to multi-ethnic street brawls featuring “many gunshots”, but police later said that they were seeking just one individual for the stabbings, which have so far left one man dead and seven people injured, two critically.
“It does appear to be a random attack because we haven’t found any links between the victims, either in their nature or in where they were socialising,” claimed Chief Superintendent Steve Graham, with the BBC saying that police line was that they did not have evidence the stabbings were terror-related, a hate crime, or linked to gangs or disorder — and that they were refusing to release a suspect description.
However, David Brown of The Times has now released a video of a man claiming to be a witness to part of the stabbing spree which identifies the suspect as “a black guy, between 20 to 25, wearing a hoodie [with two vertical white stripes], a black cap, [and] black trousers”:
The account by the witness, identified as local bar owner Savvas Sfrantziz, was also reported by Sky News, who published a recording of him saying he saw the suspect “stabbing [a] girl several times in the neck” from “about 20 yards away.”
“She started screaming: ‘He’s stabbing me’,” Sfrantziz said, saying that bystanders were initially slow to act because they thought the suspect was only robbing her for a necklace.
“It was a busy time and people started panicking when they saw the girl on the floor — and there was another guy further up in the middle of the road,” he recalled.
“You could see blood all over the English guy. The girl was unconscious, but the guy was screaming ‘he stabbed me’ and swearing at his attacker. It happened within seconds.”
Sfrantziz said the attack “looked very random, the way he did it,” as he “just went up to her and just stabbed her. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He described the suspect as eerily calm, and that “he didn’t even run, he just walked” away from his victim until two male bystanders chased him from the scene.
As of the time of publication, Sfrantziz’s account of the stabbings remains unconfirmed, and West Midlands Police is telling social media users referencing videos of it that they are “working through CCTV and witness statements [and will] issue images and a description as soon as we are able to.”
This story is developing…
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