Shocking figures today reveal the scale of the youth knife crisis after another weekend of carnage on Britain’s blood-soaked streets.
The families of two more murdered teenagers – a Girl Scout once invited to Downing Street and a pupil at a top private school – were in mourning last night.
New statistics show the number of under-16s treated in hospital for stab wounds has nearly doubled in five years.
Doctors are battling to save three children a day on average as knife crime rates soar to the highest level since the Second World War.
Jodie Chesney, 17, was stabbed to death on Saturday night. Her death comes as new figures reveal rise in youth knife crime
Flowers were laid in memory of Ms Chesney in the London suburb of Harold Hill near Romford
As a former police chief branded the epidemic of stabbings a ‘national crisis’, the figures revealed:
A total of 347 under-16s were taken to A&E with stab wounds last year, up from 180 in 2012-13 The number of child knife killers has risen by 77 per cent in two years Knife-point robberies by teenagers have leapt by more than 50 per cent in the same period, and the number of teens carrying out knife-point rapes has surged by a third It came after Jodie Chesney, 17, was stabbed in the back as she sat on a park bench with her boyfriend in Romford, east London, on Friday nightYesterday her distraught mother laid flowers at the scene as relatives said they were struggling to come to terms with a ‘random and unprovoked’ attack on a ‘beautiful, lovely and quirky young girl with her whole life in front of her’.
In another horrific attack, Manchester Grammar School pupil Yousef Makki, also 17, was stabbed to death in the Cheshire village of Hale Barns on Saturday. Police were quizzing two 17-year-old private school pupils yesterday.
Yousef Makki, 17, was also stabbed to death on Saturday night. Two private school pupils are being questioned in relation to the incident
The murders follow the fatal stabbings of three teenagers in a fortnight in Birmingham, which led to West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson declaring a ‘national emergency’.
Last night Home Secretary Sajid Javid promised to meet chief constables this week as he came under intense pressure to end the bloodshed.
Former Scotland Yard Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe accused ministers of failing to get to grips with a ‘national crisis’ and of leaving police ‘in the Dark Ages’.
An investigation by Channel
