Someone got murdered five minutes from where I live today

Bucket

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38257886

It happened at 5:20pm.

I was walking back from a class at my uni, which is about thirty seconds' walk from the scene of the incident, at about 5pm.

If my assessment had over-run by fifteen or twenty minutes, who knows what I might have seen or even been involved in. Everyone in my year has been communicating with each other this evening to make sure we're all safe. Thankfully that seems to be the case.

Horrific.

lasermonkey

Blimey, I used to walk by that spot quite often, when I was on my way to the Luminaire or Good Ship. It always seemed like one of the more chilled-out parts of London.

KKJale

Awful.

Someone was stabbed on the other side of my garden wall two weeks ago, and died. 

And it happened at 9 a.m. on a Saturday. But folks round here just carry on.

South London    

skunkwerx

Same near me although I'm more East London. Seems to be all too often.

proggy

I work just down the road from there in Swiss Cottage.

CHRISB50

Cracking opening sentence...

'A man has died after a gunshots were fired on a busy north-west London street during rush hour.'

I bet the traffic was a nightmare round there yesterday evening.

earwighoney

Are you a suspect? 

CabbageCat

Five minutes? That's nothing. There must be a million people within five minutes of anywhere in London.

This happened opposite my flat. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-arrested-over-prostitute-murder-1805048.html

 I was questioned by police. I didn't know I had a hooker as a neighbour. I thought they were all students.

IvanMC

Abhorrent news. What's wrong with the world? Have murders definitely become an everyday occurrence? The full realisation of such events will have to sink in and something must change. My greatest wish.

boogieman

Not really that surprised tbh. I used to live in the Queens Park estate. Estate agents sell it as "artisans' dwellings" these days but they're basically Victorian two up two downs. The Mozart estate was at the bottom of our road, a sinkhole estate where they dumped every shitty family in the borough. It held the record for gun crime in the U.K. at one time. 

Glad youre ok @Bucket ;

CabbageCat

IvanMC said:

Have murders definitely become an everyday occurrence?

If, by "everyday" you mean, "happen more than once a day" then yes. I suspect you will have to go back tens of millennia to find a year were there were fewer than 365 murders.

Chalky

I knew an old guy who witnessed a murder. Helped the police, went to court, and was threatened by the murderer's relatives. He never recovered from the stress and the loss of faith in the community where he'd lived for many decades.  Died soon after.

Cirrus

IvanMC said:

Abhorrent news. What's wrong with the world? Have murders definitely become an everyday occurrence? The full realisation of such events will have to sink in and something must change. My greatest wish.

Statistics would suggest that there are less violent crimes now than in the past, which is nice. You've got to take the wider view on this sort of thing, rather than seeing bad news and concluding the world is going to the dogs, I think.

As for what's wrong with the world, try posting a politcal thread. I'm sure you'll get some idea. 

Last year someone was shot and killed next to a bus stop at the time my wife would have been waiting there on her journey home from work, except that she'd volunteered to stay later to man the office phone. That was weird for me to contemplate, though I rationalised it as just being one of the downsides of living in a major city.

I am much happier now she drives to work, mind...

Axe_meister

Well in the 13 years we've lived in our street we've had
5 Stabbings (including a stab victim who came to our door asking for help)
1 Police shooting of a crazy with a sword
20 different drug busts
An ice cream van caught selling drugs to school kids at a primary school on the same street.

ESBlonde

Local hospital was covered in police yesterday as the victims came in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-38254566

Probable 'travelling folk' incident so little chance of anyone talking. But Double murder is a rare one the like of which we haven't seen since the 'ripper/Steven Wright' incedent with ladies of the night ten years ago.

But we still talk of victorian murderers now and the murder rate during WWII was appaling here in the UK!

Safety is probable but never guaranteed.

scrumhalf

Axe_meister said:

Well in the 13 years we've lived in our street we've had
5 Stabbings (including a stab victim who came to our door asking for help)
1 Police shooting of a crazy with a sword
20 different drug busts
An ice cream van caught selling drugs to school kids at a primary school on the same street.

How are things in Downing Street these days?

Axe_meister

scrumhalf said:

Axe_meister said:

Well in the 13 years we've lived in our street we've had
5 Stabbings (including a stab victim who came to our door asking for help)
1 Police shooting of a crazy with a sword
20 different drug busts
An ice cream van caught selling drugs to school kids at a primary school on the same street.

How are things in Downing Street these days?

Bastard at no 11 is after my job. Two strange looking guys in black hang around my front door all the time. As as for all those perverts with their big cameras trying to get pictures of my wifes tits......

goat

Cirrus said:

Statistics would suggest that there are less violent crimes now than in the past, which is nice. You've got to take the wider view on this sort of thing, rather than seeing bad news and concluding the world is going to the dogs, I think.

I was going to post something similar but when i looked for stats the murder rate in London was up 25% from 2014-15. So maybe London at least is going to the dogs.

Cirrus

For fear of sounding like a horrendous monster, I think if you're in London you're fair game.

IvanMC

@Cirrus , that's ok, I know what you mean, but I do believe something could be done; the crime rate could go down. I honestly believe that. There has to be will: conscious, collective, popular, even royal, and political will. By the way, I don't think anyone needs to become political to talk about this - at all. Statistics? I think such news was out of the ordinary some years ago. We'd feel genuinely shocked at the news of a murder. Oh, "it was worse some years back," statistics say. I'm overjoyed now. But are they 100% reliable anyway? I've lived in Buenos Aires for some years. The crime rate was nearly non-existent in the 80s. It became alarming in the 90s. Now they go like "statistics say Buenos Aires has the lowest crime rate in South America, with the exception of Chile, Uruguay and Ecuador." There's no outstanding merit in that. Anyway, I seriously hope things get better. Not only in London. Everywhere.

Myranda

You know... if you get crime statistics for all the places you go in your life, putting pins in maps for murders/rapes/stabbings/assaults ... I'd bet you'd not want to go that way to work any more...

Doesn't really matter where you are - even Yorkshire had a ripper ... they called him Tut'Ripper but still. ;-)

crime happens all over the place and we're thankfully blissfully unaware of most of it