LONDON: London police said that they had apprehended a teenager after a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death on her way to school on Wednesday, creating fresh concern about the scale of knife crime in the United Kingdom (UK).
After the reports of the stabbing, emergency services including an air ambulance were called to the scene in Croydon, south London, at around 8.30 am (0730 GMT), AFP news agency reported.
Paramedics struggled to save the girl but she was pronounced dead at the scene fifty minutes later, police said, adding that a seventeen-year-old boy was later arrested. London mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “heartbroken” by the fatal incident and vowed to continue working day and night to end the scourge of knife crime in the city.
Deaths in Knife Incidents in UK
According to official data, ninety people under the age of twenty-five were killed in England and Wales with a knife or sharp object in the year to March 2023. Of those thirteen were under the age of 16.
The deaths were among fifty thousand stabbing incidents in the year to March 2023, a 5% increase on the previous year and a 75% increase on a decade ago, the data from the Office for National Statistics revealed. Police said the suspect in custody was being interrogated by detectives.
Andy Brittain, Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, said that their sympathies are with the young girl’s family who are facing the most tragic of news. The officers are with the girl’s family to support them. Media reports said the girl had just got off a bus at the time and appeared to have been having an argument with a boy who then stabbed her.
The girl, whose identity has not yet been revealed, was a student at Old Palace of John Whitgift School, a private girls’ school in Croydon.
The school said in a statement that they are deeply shocked by the tragic and senseless death of their much-loved and valued pupil and friend. It will take some time for the Old Palace community to come to terms with this terrible news.
