Law enforcement officials and forensic personnel put up a fence on Hart Road in Southport, northwest England, on July 29, 2024, following a knife assault, the place two kids have been killed and 11 extra injured | Picture by Darren Staples / AFP
LONDON — A teenage boy with a knife attacked a kids’s dance and yoga class in northwest England on Monday, killing two kids and wounding 11 different folks in a “ferocious” rampage that despatched bloodied kids working right into a road to flee the horror, police and witnesses mentioned.
A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of homicide and tried homicide within the assault in Southport, a seaside city close to Liverpool, Merseyside Police mentioned. The motive was not clear, however police mentioned detectives weren’t treating the assault as terror-related.
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9 kids have been wounded, six of them in essential situation. Two wounded adults who tried to guard them additionally have been in essential situation, police mentioned.
“We consider the adults who have been injured have been bravely attempting to guard the kids who have been being attacked,” Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy mentioned.
The Taylor Swift-themed workshop was held on the primary week of faculty trip for kids aged about 6 to 11. An commercial for the two-hour session promised yoga, dance and bracelet making.
Witnesses described listening to blood-curdling screams and seeing kids lined in blood.
“They have been within the street, working from the nursery,” mentioned Naked Varathan, who owns a store close by. “That they had been stabbed, right here, right here, right here, all over the place,” indicating neck, again and chest.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer referred to as the assault “horrendous and deeply surprising.”
Merseyside Police mentioned officers have been referred to as at about midday to an deal with in Southport, a seaside city of about 100,000 folks close to Liverpool. It referred to as it a “main incident” however mentioned there was no wider risk to the general public.
“Once they arrived they have been shocked to search out that a number of folks, a lot of whom have been kids, had been subjected to a ferocious assault and had suffered critical accidents,” Kennedy mentioned.
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Colin Parry, an auto physique store proprietor, mentioned a lot of the stabbing victims seemed to be younger women.
“The moms are coming right here now and screaming,” Parry mentioned. “It is sort of a scene from a horror film. … It’s like one thing from America, not like sunny Southport.”
The suspect, who has not been recognized, lived in a village about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the location of the assault, police mentioned. He was initially from Cardiff, Wales.
Ryan Carney, who lives together with his mom on the street, mentioned his mom noticed emergency employees carrying kids “lined in purple, lined in blood. She mentioned she may see the stab wounds within the backs of the kids.”
“All these items by no means actually occurs round right here,” he mentioned. “You hear of it, stabbings and stuff like that in main cities, your Manchesters, your Londons. That is sunny Southport. That’s what folks name it. The solar’s out. It’s a stunning place to be.”
Britain’s worst assault on kids occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergarten pupils and their trainer lifeless in a college gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The U.Ok. subsequently banned the non-public possession of virtually all handguns.
Mass shootings and murders with firearms are uncommon in Britain, the place knives have been utilized in about 40% of homicides within the yr to March 2023. A number of headline-grabbing assaults and a current rise in knife crime have stoked anxieties and led to requires the federal government to do extra to clamp down on bladed weapons.
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