Stabbings of 15- and 17-year-old bring capital’s homicide toll to 115 this year

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Tributes have been paid to two teenagers who were fatally stabbed on the streets of London within 24 hours.

Purple flowers were laid near Clapham South tube station in memory of a 17-year-old killed there on Friday just after 4.30pm.

The day before, 15-year-old Jay Hughes was killed in a “premeditated attack” near the Morley’s chicken shop in Bellingham, south-east London, at about 5.20pm.

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the teenagers’ deaths were “a terrible waste of young lives”, as he offered his condolences to the families.

The killings came as debate continues over the effect of police budget cuts and what issues officers should focus their limited resources on.

Meanwhile, police said two other teenage boys were shot at from a car in the Handsworth area of Birmingham on Friday night.

West Midlands police said a 15-year-old was in a stable condition in hospital after being shot in the back, while a 14-year-old was hit in the arm.

Jay’s aunt, Rochelle, said he went out “to get some food and he never came back”.

“He loved riding his mountain bike, was very bright and brilliant at art. He wanted to be a cartoonist,” she said.

Scotland Yard has yet to make any arrests over the two deaths, which bring the homicide toll in London to 115 this year, 19 of them being teenagers.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, said on Friday that stretched forces must prioritise serious violence and drug gangs rather than non-criminal acts of misogyny.

She said officers “can’t go on increasing the scale of the mission” without further funding as she indicated that other offences, such as online fraud, were lower priority.

Khan has previously blamed rising violence on the £700m cuts to the Met’s budget over seven years, with more expected to come.

On Friday, he announced the latest measure in the “public health approach” to tackling violence, with a review of the most serious offences since 2014 to try to discover the trends behind attacks.