The man was pronounced dead at the scene (Picture: PA)

A man has died in Lewisham after accidentally shooting himself while trying to gun someone down, witnesses have claimed.

Police were called to Sydenham Road at around 3.45pm after reports of suspicious activity in the area.

Shots were then heard before a man, believed to be in his 20s, was found with gunshot wounds in the busy south London area.

He died at the scene just five minutes later.


One woman, 56, living on nearby Venner Road described seeing the man attempt to shoot someone else before being hit by the bullet himself.

Witnesses said he had been trying to shoot someone else (Picture: PA)

She said: ‘He ended up shooting himself. The bullet bounced off a car window. You can see on the car window where the bullet bounced off it.



‘After it happened, the boy he [tried] to shoot stood there filming him.’

She said she had been stuck inside the police cordon for three hours since the shooting, adding that she believed the victim to have had no parents.

Two men drinking in a nearby pub heard one gunshot, but believed it to be a car backfiring – and had received several versions of what had happened.

One, who did not want to be named, said: ‘We’ve heard three or four different stories – we’ve heard it was a guy on a moped, someone in a car and then that the (victim) did it to himself.’

Police say there have been no arrests at this stage and enquiries are continuing to take place.

No arrests have been made (Picture: PA)

The shooting comes just under a week after a teenager, 18, was stabbed in death in West Ham, East London.

While on September 5, a 15-year-old died after being stabbed just days before in Tottenham, north London.

Police found Perry Jordan Brammer suffering from multiple stab wounds in the Broadwater Farm Estate shortly after 11am on Friday August 30.

Masked gang attacked men in their car with knives and a gun

Two men, aged 21 and 25, were arrested after the attack and remain in police custody.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to tackle the rising levels of violent crime in the capital by investing in the police and extending officers’ stop and search powers.

The plans have already come under fire from MPs such as Labour’s shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who called further stop and searches a ‘recipe for unrest’.

She said: ‘Evidence-based stop and search will always be a vital tool in preventing crime. But random stops have only poisoned police-community relations.’

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