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A doctor who fought to save the latest teenage victim of London knife crime today pleaded for an end to the killing, saying: “Enough is enough.”

Tom Konig performed open-heart surgery on student Shaquan Sammy-Plummer in the back of an ambulance after he was stabbed in the chest during a fight at a house party in Enfield. He had the task of telling the 17-year-old’s mother that her son had died.

Shaquan was the fourth teenager killed in London this year. Today, in a message to attackers, Mr Konig pleaded: “Enough is enough. It is time to put your knives down.”

The trauma surgeon was part of London’s Air Ambulance fast-response team that intercepted the ambulance as it rushed Shaquan to hospital on Friday night.

In an extraordinary insight into the efforts made to keep such stabbing victims alive, Mr Konig told how they cut through his rib cage and massaged his heart after he went into cardiac arrest.

“We held the heart of a young boy in our hands... and willed it to beat and to survive. We continued to hospital but our efforts, and the efforts of the hospital team could not save this young man.

“Another victim of the awful epidemic of senseless knife crime that is causing the death and disability of too many young men.”

Today friends paid tribute to the “smart, ambitious” boy from Finsbury Park who was a pupil at LaSWAP Sixth Form College in Camden and had a part-time job at Waitrose.

Mr Konig said he had been motivated to speak out after having to break the news to Shaquan’s mother with “brutal honesty”.

Recalling the scene at the Royal London Hospital, he said: “If only we could have brought him back, we tried, oh how we tried.” He told the Standard today: “It was me breaking the bad news to a mother who had no idea. Here is her young son going out to work at Waitrose on a Friday night and he is gone. His life is over. It’s the utter futility of it.”

According to City Hall statistics, the number of knife assaults causing injury increased six per cent between 2013 and 2014, from 3,208 to 3,405.

In a separate incident, a 24-year-old man died after being shot at a party in Thamesmead. Clive Massi, 24, was a student engineer whose family fled Congo’s civil war a decade ago.

Enough is enough, put your knives down, says surgeon sickened by senseless deaths

"LAST night, a team consisting of myself and two London air ambulance service paramedics was one of two duty teams providing advanced trauma care to the people of London.

After we had finished handing over one patient to the team at St Mary’s hospital we were alerted to another job. The information we were given was of an adult male, stabbed to the chest. The London Ambulance Service teams, already with the patient, needed our help. We donned our protective stab vests and plotted a route to the scene.

It soon became apparent that the patient was very sick and they wanted to move to hospital. Our paramedic in ambulance control co-ordinated both teams so that we met seamlessly. We had made a plan of what we would do if we were faced with the worst scenario, namely a patient in cardiac arrest with a stab wound to the chest.

What we found was the all too familiar scenario of a young boy with a single stab wound to the chest, who was in cardiac arrest. Our teaching is to make a very quick assessment and then proceed to attempt to repair the damage that has been done.

We performed a resuscitative thoracotomy — immediately opening the chest to gain access to the heart and lungs to simultaneously diagnose the injury and treat it. In this instance the sac around the heart was tense and filled with the blood that had leaked from the stabbed heart deep within it. The heart struggled to beat again and as it did it bled from its wounds and a significant wound from the aorta, the main artery that leaves it to take blood to the rest of the body.

The wounds were sutured, warmed blood was transfused directly into the heart and adrenaline infused to stimulate it to beat again. We held the heart of a young boy in our hands and willed it to beat and to survive.

We continued to hospital but our efforts and the efforts of the hospital team could not save this young man. Another victim of the awful epidemic of senseless knife crime that is causing the death and disability of too many young men with the whole of their lives ahead of them.

Not long after, I was notified of the arrival of the victim’s mother in the emergency department. Someone would need to tell her that her young son was dead. How best to break this awful news? Do we talk about the injuries sustained, our efforts to treat them, how we hoped that we had been successful, our optimism?

No, this occasion called for brutal honesty. “I’m sorry but I have awful news. Your son is dead, he was stabbed in the chest and died. We tried our very best, we really did, we operated, we gave him blood, we held his heart in our hands and willed it to beat on its own, but it was badly damaged and he had bled terribly. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She heard little of what followed after I told her he was dead. If only we could have brought him back, we tried, oh how we tried.

Another teenager killed by the hand of another on the streets of London. Another life lost, another family torn apart, another perpetrator set to spend time imprisoned to dwell on their crimes.

No one wins, everyone loses. Many have been blamed for what some believe is an epidemic — the broken families, the schools, the politicians and police — but ultimate responsibility lies with the hand holding the knife.

The person who decides to carry a weapon that they are sadly all too ready to use to resolve a dispute. Enough is enough. It is time to put your knives down. Find another way to argue and to fight, now, before it’s too late."