South London gangs linked to stabbings?
10:10am Tuesday 27th December 2011 in Where I Live
South London gangs linked to stabbings?
Police say south London gangs could be linked to two stabbings - one of them fatal - in Oxford Street yesterday.
Shoppers are expected to flock to one of Britain's busiest shopping streets again, the scene of stabbings which left a teenager dead and a man with leg wounds.
Horrified shoppers saw a teenager stabbed to death in broad daylight on Monday as thousands of bargain hunters thronged London's Oxford Street.
As the West End shopping hub bustled, a fight broke out in its Foot Locker store leading to the 18-year-old's death at around 1.45pm. Hours later a second stabbing took place on the same street just a few hundred yards away, leaving a 21-year-old man with non-fatal leg wounds.
On Monday night Scotland Yard said they had recovered a number of weapons from the first crime scene and arrested 11 people. Three males have been arrested in connection with the second stabbing, which took place near Oxford Circus Underground station at about 6.20pm.
Inspector Bruce Middlemiss, the duty officer for Westminster Police, said that shoppers should not feel unsafe but that police would conduct a "review". "There is a high police presence here, we have a number of operations in place already for the shopping times because we were aware of the amount of people who would be here. We are going to back and review the intelligence for both incidents and see if we need to increase the police presence here but at the moment we are not concerned for ordinary members of the public who are shopping."
Scotland Yard said Oxford Street has fully reopened to pedestrians, buses and other traffic, while a small crime scene remains in place outside the Foot Locker store.
Police would not comment on speculation that the row which resulted in the south London teenager's death was over a pair of trainers. They said the fight had broken out after the youths began "arguing" in the shop.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne, the senior investigating officer from the Metropolitan Police's Homicide Command, said: "There appears to have been two groups of young people opposing each other and involved in this incident. It would appear at this stage there was a weapon involved that may well have been a knife but I can't confirm that yet.
"A number of weapons have been recovered from that scene, whether I have got the murder weapon I don't know. There's an assortment of items but no guns."
Amateur video footage posted on YouTube showed angry scenes outside the Foot Locker store as police held back remonstrating youths while paramedics attempted to revive the first stabbing victim.
