“Gangs of masked men” fought a running battle on the streets of Manchester, England, with “machetes and guns” in what police have described as an “isolated incident”.
The incident on Cemetery Road South, where it “always seems like something bad is going on”, according to one local resident, concluded with a 15-year-old boy hospitalised with stab wounds and a police helicopter and armed officers on the scene, and going over the street with a fine-tooth comb for evidence into the following day.
“At 10.20 p.m., I heard tyres screeching, went to investigate and found a white, medium-sized vehicle speeding north up Cemetery Road South,” an eyewitness told the Manchester Evening News.
“There were two to three men dressed in black inside. Six or so men dressed the same, including balaclavas, were in pursuit of the car while wielding machete sized-blades, what looked like a gun and some other form of weapon,” they recalled.
“The white car was speeding up and down the road attempting to hit the six guys on foot. A knife fight began once those in the white car either left the vehicle or were forced from the vehicle on Brookfield Drive.
“Members of the gang of six were shouting ‘shoot him, f***ing shoot him’.”
After around 15 minutes of this, the witness recalled, the situation escalated, with another carload of males armed with “blunt weapons” arriving on the scene.
“I saw groups of youths in the street, and cars racing up and down. Then I heard some loud bangs — they sounded like gunfire,” reported another witness.
Lockdowns imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government did not stop such violence in the Greater Manchester area in 2020 either, with serious crimes being committed at illegal “quarantine raves”.
At one, which police declined to shut down on the basis that enforcing the law against revellers was “unachievable”, two men aged 36 and 21 were shot dead.
Two raves in June attended by up 6,000 people saw similar tragedies, with an 18-year-old being raped, three people being stabbed, and a 20-year-old dying after a suspected drug overdose.
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