A 17-year-old girl has been killed and a 16-year-old boy is in a critical condition after two separate shootings in London.

Police were called to an incident in Tottenham at 9.35pm on Monday and found Tanesha Melbourne-Blake with a gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

She was shot by a gunman in a moving car while in the street with a group of friends. A woman who knew the victim said she was “just chilling with her friends” when she was shot from a car for “no reason at all” in Chalgrove Road, a residential street near Northumberland Park station.

“The car just pulled up and started shooting,” said the 21-year-old friend, who did not want to be named. She said she heard the gunshots “like fireworks” from her house.



She said Melbourne-Blake’s mother arrived before paramedics, adding: “She was screaming. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t deserve that. Her mum didn’t deserve to watch her die.”

She described the victim as a “good girl”, adding: “She was so lovely.”

Less than an hour later officers were alerted to another shooting about three miles away in Walthamstow, east London, where they found a 16-year-old boy with gunshot injuries and a 15-year-old boy with stab wounds.



The two shootings will fuel concerns over a rise in violent crime in London. A murder investigation has been launched into the killing of the girl in Tottenham – the 47th so far this year by the Metropolitan police. There were eight in January, 15 in February, 22 in March and two so far in April.

At the present rate, London could surpass 180 homicides this year, a return to the levels last seen in 2005 when there were 181. Last year there were 116 homicides in London, excluding the deaths in the Westminster, London Bridge and Finsbury Park terrorist attacks.

In the drive-by shooting in Tottenham, at least two shots were fired in a busy street at about 9.30pm. Melbourne-Blake was struck in the upper body and another bullet hit a nearby property. When police first arrived they found about 60 people at the scene.

Detectives from Scotland Yard’s homicide command are investigating the possibility that the killing was linked to a feud between gangs in Tottenham and Wood Green.

Sources have said they believe the attack was connected to the feud in which a young person was shot in Tottenham, and then another gunned down and killed outside the Vue cinema in Wood Green. That was followed the next day by what was believed to have been a reprisal stabbing outside a sixth-form centre in north London.

Forensics officers were carrying out an examination of a car and at street level on Chalgrove Road on Tuesday.

Linda O’Hara said that her daughter, also called Tanesha, had been due to meet the 17-year-old, a longtime friend, at a McDonald’s on Monday night. “She was a lovely young woman,” she said. “She would light up the room when she came into it and had such a beautiful smile.”

O’Hara said the victim looked after her two young sisters and was also a volunteer at a community centre in nearby Bruce Grove.

“I’m sure that they came as fast as they could, but it’s just a shame that she didn’t get medical attention sooner,” she said. “It might have saved her.”



A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said paramedics had worked to save the girl but she was pronounced dead at 10.43pm. “Her next of kin are aware and a crime scene is in place. No arrests have been made at this stage,” she said.

A 43-year-old mother of six whose daughter was friends with Melbourne-Blake described how medical personnel had worked in vain to save her life for more than an hour under a tent.

“The first ones on the scene were the armed police and that took at least 10 to 15 minutes. Her eyes were open,” said the woman, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.

“It looked like she was having a fit so they put her in the recovery position … They worked on her for well over an hour and did surgery on her under the tent.



“The kids were at my house earlier in the day. They are friends with my daughter and niece. They went to the youth centre … maybe they were back here about 8pm. There was nothing wrong then.”

The 16-year-old boy who was shot in the Markhouse Road area of Walthamstow was taken to hospital in east London where he remained in a critical condition on Tuesday. The boy who was stabbed was also being treated in hospital.

London murder rate set for 13-year high after 31st stabbing death Read more

On Sunday, a 20-year-old man became the 31st person to die as a result of knife crime in London this year.



He was stabbed moments after leaving a bar in Wandsworth, south London, and died in the street. On Thursday, the family of Abraham Badru, 26, who was shot dead in Hackney, east London, on 25 March, warned that “gun culture is becoming rampant in our community”.

Asked whether Theresa May was concerned about the number of murders in London this year, a Downing Street spokesman said: “These are all tragic cases and our thoughts are with the families of the victims.

“There can be no place in our society for violent crime. The government is determined to do everything it can to break the cycle.

“We have already consulted on new laws on offensive and dangerous weapons, including banning online stores from delivering knives to residential addresses and making it an offence to possess certain weapons in private.”