Displaying items by tag: youth culture

The murders of two 17-year-olds in one weekend have catapulted knife crime back into news headlines. Jodie Chesney’s death stands out because she is the first girl out of ten teenagers who have been killed by knives so far this year. While most victims of murders know their assailant, reports suggest Jodie was stabbed in the back by a stranger in a London park, in a ‘random and unprovoked attack’. Last weekend’s other victim, Yousef Ghaleb Makki, was killed in an affluent Manchester suburb. He attended a private school, and was planning to train as a heart surgeon. These two deaths show that knife violence involving teenagers is not, as is sometimes suggested, a problem confined to boys on tough estates. The homicide rate and the number of teenagers killed with knives in England and Wales is at its highest for a decade.