London’s Metropolitan Police Service has launched its third homicide investigation in 24 hours after a man in his thirties was fatally stabbed in Tower Hamlets, east London, on Saturday.
Scotland Yard said in a statement: “At the scene a man, aged 30s, had suffered stab injuries. He was sadly pronounced dead at the scene at 2.37pm. A crime scene has been established.”
“At this early stage there have been no arrests and officers retain an open mind as to motive,” the statement added.
The stabbing brings the total number of killings in London to 56 for the year so far; last year, there were 132 homicides in 2018 — the highest in ten years.
The death came after two males, believed to be in their late teens, were killed in separate incidents just 12 minutes apart early on Friday evening. The first victim was fatally stabbed in Wandsworth, south-west London, at 4:42pm, while another youth was shot to death in Plumstead, south-east London, just before 5pm.
Following the two killings, police made ten arrests: in the case of the stabbing, six males who The Mirror reports are aged between 16 and 19; and three men and one woman were arrested in connection to the fatal shooting.
There are an average of 40 knife crimes every day in London, with all but one of the 33 London boroughs — Bexley — having had at least one fatal stabbing in 2017 and 2018.
London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan continues to blame central government’s funding cuts for the crime wave; however, the mayor has diverted resources to non-essential programmes including £1.7 million on an “online hate crime hub” and £34 million for environmental projects.
On the third anniversary of Mr Khan’s term as London mayor, the Greater London Assembly Conservatives released a report that said that since the Labour politician has been running the capital city, robbery has risen by 59.3 per cent, burglary by 36.9 per cent, knife crime by 52.3 per cent, gun crime by 30 per cent, and homicide by 24 per cent.