Girl killed in London park stabbed by silent attacker

The United Kingdom Home Secretary Sajid Javid is set to meet police chiefs on Wednesday to look at ways to combat the “senseless violence” that has seen a rise in the number of teenagers being stabbed to death in major cities.

Last Friday, a 17-year-old girl killed in an east London park was stabbed once in the back by a silent attacker who did not speak a word to her, police have said. The following night 17-year-old Yousef Makki was stabbed to death in the village of Hale Barns, near Altrincham in Greater Manchester.

The Metropolitan police said on Sunday that teenager Jodie Chesney had been with five friends in the east London park listening to music and socializing. Witnesses saw two males in the park who left at 9pm.

“Around 30 minutes later the pair returned to the park and walked straight towards the group, where one of the males stabbed Jodie once in the back. Nothing was said by the two suspects, who ran off in the direction of Retford Road,” the Met said.

Speaking to reporters, her devastated grandmother Debbie Chesney said too many young people were having their lives “cut short by needless violence“.

“How have we come to this point where kids can’t have a walk in a park without suffering an unprovoked attack?”

Jodie Chesney is the first teenage girl to die in a homicide in the capital this year.She became the 18th person to be killed in London this year, and the fifth teenager to die.

Police chiefs have called for the public's help in stopping knife crime and patrols have been boosted as a result of the stabbings across London in 2019.

Three teenagers have died in stabbings in the space of two weeks in Birmingham, where 269 knife crimes have been recorded so far this year.

West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson called on the home secretary to give his area a special policing grant to tackle the problem.

He said: “Many of the children who are getting involved in these crimes have been excluded from their school.

“This is a national emergency, and we must do something about that exclusion of children because those children are on almost an immediate path into crime and into violence.”

West Midlands Police Chief Constable David Thompson told Sky News the rate of knife crime was increasing across all major cities, adding that people in the city “want to see some action quickly”.

Former Met police commissioner Hogan Howe, told the BBC that the government should appoint a leader, or tsar, to “get a grip” on the problem, and that person should be in charge of how money is spent - especially on recruitment - not individual forces.