Another Young Person Stabbed to Death on Way to School
In the News
This madness has to stop, imagine sending you child to school and them getting the phone call that they've been murdered in this way, I blame the London mayor for the state of London at the moment, stopped stop and search ect..
Allowing gangs to thrive, justice system and sentencing in this country is a complete joke 
Parents cannot be absolved of some, if not all, of the blame in this problem. If children are raised in a loving caring household with boundaries it wouldn't enter their heads to commit these crimes. I have seen too many kids raised in homes where abuse and violence is the norm, swearing, drinking and drugs an everyday occurrence. These kids don't stand a chance. These things should not even reach a stage of stop and search, the seeds are sown long before the kids are free to roam the streets.
We are expected to train our pet dogs but it seems no parents take the training of their offspring seriously.
Lynibis we moved out of Leeds because it's the same there, it just was not a save environment for our kids, I was born and raised there, so sad to see how it's down the drain
martinlufc5637 ,Our daughter didn't play on our road growing up,we invited her friends round & she went round to their homes,we knew the families of the children she was friends with..We walked daughter to school bus stop til she was 14 & always made sure we knew where she was.
Our daughter is our only child,I'm from a family of 6 & my partner is from a family of 12.
My partner & I always made sure our child was safe,now just turned 25 & just gone into her 3rd year as a Student Radiographer at Bradford University she moved opposite LGI in July as her placements are at Pinderfields, Pontefract & Dewsbury Hospitals..Our daughter loves life in Leeds.
My partner & I visited her in Leeds yesterday afternoon, took her out for Dinner before she walked us so far to the train station,it was going dark,she was going shopping. I asked if she felt safe,YES she replied, she rang us as we were nearing Sheffield to let us know she was safely home & we left her know we were home safely too..
Out of daughter 's window we look down & can see Leeds Central Police Station on one side of the road & on the other side Leeds Magistrates Court so hopefully our daughter is safe!
Lynibis How do you reconcile people like Jeffery Dahmer? He's one of many examples of serial killers who had a loving, stable home life, and decided to kill people for fun anyway. Nature Vs Nurture is an argument as old as the study of psychology itself. And I think it's pretty safe to say that neither are always 100% to blame.
In the context of criminal gangs and knife crime in London specifically, I believe it is also safe to say that there is a cultural aspect to it. You could do your absolute best as a parent, but if the crowd your child hangs around with is into gang culture and organised crime, there's very little you can do about it. Peers often influence teenagers far more than their parents can.
I know when I was a teenager, I had no time for what my parents thought, I was all about impressing my mates. Luckily, this mostly involved things like drinking in parks and jumping out of second storey windows into bushes - not stabbing people or mugging people for iphones for a living.
I tend to agree with the OP. Sadiq has created a safe space for criminals to operate with impunity in London. After the London bridge terror attacks, he infamously quipped that "terrorism is part and parcel of living in a big city"
I think these teenagers should be tried as adults, sent to maximum security prisons, and I think there should be more armed officers, with more authority to shoot violent criminals on sight at ongoing crime scenes. See how cool they think it is then.
Right now we have armed officers handing in their weapons and revising their career choice, as they watch their colleagues get penalised through the courts for shooting violent criminals in the line of duty. It really does just feel like we are going backwards as fast as we possibly can.
FearLoathing nothing is ever 100% either way. Of course some kids from good homes succumb to peer pressure. But I have watched two true crime stories in the last 24 hours where both murderers came from abusive homes. I am 100% positive that if you did a poll of all violent criminals more would come from bad homes than good. And of course there are mental illnesses like schizophrenia.
Lynibis I think when speaking specifically about London and knife crime, that gang culture there is a huge factor. The kids literally can't get away from it even if they want to, it is all around them. Nearly 13,000 knife crimes in 12 months. Over thirty murders of teenage males alone. I just don't think you can solely blame parents for a phenomenon like that. Something else is clearly going on, for it to be that greater number, and localised to one city. It's demonstrably a cultural anomaly. That's not to say the parents are always faultless, but there is much more at play here than just a rough home life.
Lots of people have a bad homelife and don't stab people to death, also.
FearLoathing I agree, in some of those instances you only have to disrespect someone or even look at them the wrong way and your life is at stake.
It's awful everywhere now kids don't stand a chance and people think I'm way over the top with my kids but look what's happening, I don't care what people think at least I know my kids are safe
Leannexxx I've been accused of the same, I'd rather be over the top knowing my children safet than not, I never had to worry about any of the things growing up that are happening today, drugs, knifes, gangs ect...
martinlufc5637 exactly I'm not changing who I am to make sure my kids are safe that's one of my jobs when I was a kid I could go out do what I wanted never made trouble just have fun with my friends and now that's no safe
Pfs Surely the government hasn't solved these problems. The cause is we have become a much poorer country as people have happily exported their wages on imported cars and foreign holidays and created a huge trade deficit and debts. This has crippled our economy and many services have been cut back like the police. Poverty and lack of jobs caused by their actions has had a negative effect on communities and led to more crime. Also you have to lay most of the blame on the people who are committing these crimes surely. Don't get me wrong though I think most politicians are utter scum and useless individuals but statistically the damage is caused by the main population.
For example we have high quality reliable cars made in the UK by Toyota and Nissan. They last longer and need less frequent repair. So people could buy those and spend less and not replace their cars so often. Instead we have a majority of imported cars, often German cars which are very unreliable, very expensive to buy and maintain and typically become uneconomic to repair much sooner. This does huge damage to our economy as cars are such a major investment.
People basically just do what they want and are on economic self-destruct. Yes the government should prevent this and intervene to prevent the damage caused by the population but we have grossly incompetent politicians.
Doesn't matter where you live.we cannot control the mind of an individual..we don't know the full story yet..but if some lunatic decides to do what he does then we cannot change that..it's an absolute nightmare this has happened
.my thoughts and prayers are with the family ..the loss of a family member is nothing but heart ache x
Kitty10 it's not just a random maniac, 45,000 knife crimes inthe last 8 years, 30 dead so far this year
Kitty10 lots of individuals doing the same thing, though. And in greater and greater numbers, and specifically in London more than anywhere else. Ask yourself why that is?
martinlufc5637 oh okay..please don't insult my intelligence. ..never said it was..please feel free to spout your opinion for som ld points
Kitty10 I couldn't careless for a few misely points lol are you serious " if some maniac decides to do what he does" maniac lunatic is the same, are you getting the attention you need now
martinlufc5637 mmmm yes thank you...got all the attention I need..you obviously need it more than me..you have obviously never lost your mother. Sister or best friend...get a grip..oops more points for you x
Her name was Elianne Andam, and this is a photo recently shared:
No info of the killer has been publicized, though.
Law abiding citizens in the U.K. should have access to self defense weapons for their own protection, hell, even pepper spray is illegal which is just absurd as that's a means of protecting him/herself over someone with a knife (pointless if it were against a gun, of course).
Instead, the alternative is, as I like to call it "stain spray"
That's not really going to do you much good. "Plenty of time to get you to safety" 
PhilipMarc Surely its more likely violent criminals would use the pepper spray to incapacitate their victims before probably stabbing them more easily?
I know I'm out of sync here with the general population but I'd have the death penalty for the boy that killed her. After all the evidence is gathered if its pretty much a 100% certain case I'd have him put to death and buried in an unmarked grave or cremated etc. He has taken a life and should forfeit his own. He is almost certainly going to be a risk to the lives of others if released and to keep in jail for decades costs millions of pounds over the long term. As we become a poorer country we need to make harder choices or corruption and crime will dominate communities.
BonzoBanana criminals carry knives and guns, not mace. At least if we had access to defensive weapons it would be a more level playing field
FearLoathing My point was obviously if mace was available freely they could also use it. Criminals can use what they like and if they wanted to use mace to incapacitate their victim before stabbing them they could and if it was legal to have mace they would be allowed to carry it as a so called defence product like anyone else. I'm certainly not against people defending themselves especially as people can kill and often come out of prison in a few years with no justice for the victim and their family at all. It's all part of the problem of idealism replacing realism. It isn't realistic to be soft on crime, it creates more crime and costs far more. We simply can't afford to run it to these idealistic standards as we become a much poorer country.
The US may default on its $30 trillion of debt soon which will result in a huge economic turbulence around the world. This is likely to lead to job losses and greater levels of poverty.
BonzoBanana we are not allowed to use self defense in this country, if we do chances are we would face criminal charges, this once great country is lost, we love in a lawless country now
martinlufc5637 It's definitely worth defending yourself. You still have a very good chance of being found not guilty as the jury may not be as stupid and naïve as the authorities and of course as we know punishment for violent crime is not proportional to the crime so it may be a light sentence anyway.
Pfs It would need a huge amount of safeguards but I think we will be faced with this hard choice as the country sinks further into debt. At the moment clearly violent sadistic people are just released back into communities to kill again partly due to mistakes but partly because of huge financial pressure and lack of resources.
The prison population is heading towards 100,000.
BonzoBanana whether criminals would use the weapons or not would be less of an issue if law abiding folk were armed. As I say, it creates a level playing field. And as I said, criminals are unlikely to carry mace. You can take the US for example. Very few crimes involveing the use of mace by a criminal, far more examples of it being used as it is intended, defensively.
FearLoathing They have guns though which is a weapon used at distance safely for them. People don't have access to guns here in the same way so mace could be seen as a viable weapon that operates from a greater distance. I'd agree that its unlikely to be used for some crimes where you threaten the victim with a knife to get money out of them but if you just want to attack someone and injure or kill them and want them incapacitated its a good option. If I wanted to stab someone especially someone physically stronger than myself I would want to incapacitate them first. I don't want to come in close only to fail to stab and have them remove my weapon and end up stabbing me instead. People don't just keel over when stabbed once like the movies they carry on fighting. Also mace is silent compared to a gun so it has some advantages. You can mace someone and kill them more quietly than a gun shot.
I'm 100% sure Mace would be used by criminals and even in the states where guns are available many crimes have been commited with mace. I did a quick google and this came up;
A man approaches another man in a parking lot, blasts him in the face with pepper spray, grabs his wallet and runs away. Six teenagers kick open an apartment door, spray a man with Mace before he can eyeball them, then make off with his color television. These two incidents illustrate a trend that is beginning to appear in police reports. The so-called “self-defense sprays” — pepper spray and tear gas — are not just for defense anymore.
Like any weapon, incapacitating sprays can be turned against innocent citizens. The sprays can blind and render a person helpless — for a while. But unlike. many weapons, sprays are cheap, easy to obtain and legal to carry “for self-defense purposes,” even by minors.
Since January 1994, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has reported at least 17 crimes involving the use of chemical sprays in Arkansas. There may have been others — police just don’t know. Crimes involving sprays have ranged from assaults to armed robbery. blah blah blah. then…
But police don’t keep statistics on how often the sprays have been used to commit crimes. In reporting crimes, most law enforcement agencies follow the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines, which groups weapons into three categories: firearm, cutting instrument and other weapons.
The last category “could be anything — a brick, a table, a glove. Anything,” said Lynn Bulloch of the Arkansas Crime Information Center. There is no separate category for sprays.
So…there is no standardized reporting from the DOJ or FBI and as others have said it appears to not be that exciting or newsworthy, although you can find some stories on the internet, it does happen.
BonzoBanana But you can already buy mace here if you wanted. Very easily. I won't detail how, but literally anyone can order it at any time. There's nothing in place to stop criminals here buying and using it right now. Just like they already buy and use guns and knives. So we have cultivated an environment where only law abiding people are unarmed in a confrontation. The criminals are already armed. There's literally no reason law abiding people shouldn't be allowed to arm themselves too. The numbers speak for themselves. 40K knife crimes in London. You think this would somehow be made worse if it were legal to carry mace?
The amount of crimes it would prevent will vastly outweigh crimes perpetrated with it. Again, look to the USA, or literally any other country where mace is legal for self defense to see that's overwhelmingly what it is used for.
And mace is a better defensive weapon than most. The entire purpose of mace is to create an opportunity to escape an attacker. Countless examples of killings that could have been avoided if the victim had used mace to make an escape.
FearLoathing I'm not against Mace in principle I just know it will be used by criminals too. At the moment knives are easier to get and use and I'm sure they will form the majority of crimes however if Mace becomes easy to obtain then of course we may see different patterns emerge. Many crimes are very quick and unpredicted and others perhaps being chased etc might give you time to prepare. As ever there will be situations where it worked well and others where it had a negative effect.
It's like that here in Birmingham .. once it was like a rare unheard of thing and now it's like every other day you hear of a stabbing and usually it's the young ones
So sad! I can't imagine what her parents are going through. They can't name the 17 year old because of legal reasons. He should be named in my opinion.
It's so sad and scary, another young life has been taken. We must find a way to stop these needles attacks, I can't imagine the pain her parents feel.
Only this weekend I heard that a 14 year old girl had taken a MACHETE into one of our schools to sort out another girl,what's happening to our country??
Join for free to get genuine deals, money saving advice and help from our friendly community
Chief Bargain Hunter
