Oxford siege ends violent holiday weekend in the UK
A tense, 14-hour stand-off between a gunman and armed police in Oxford, England, ended peacefully.
Thames Valley Police said the man fired shots in Paradise Square in the city centre, leading officers to return fire.
Police were called to the scene at 1.15pm local time on Monday and cordoned off streets after reports of gunfire.
Negotiations with the man went on into the early hours of yesterday morning. The man, 24, believed to be from Oxford, was arrested about 3am.
The ambulance service said one person was treated for a non-life threatening injury. Roads in the area were reopened but police remained at the scene.
The stand-off capped a series of shootings and stabbings over the Bank Holiday weekend, much of which took place in the capital, London.
On Monday afternoon, a young man in his late teens was taken to hospital after being stabbed in Stratford, East London.
A man, 30, believed to be a food delivery driver, was shot and injured in New Cross, south-east London, at 5pm.
Neither had life-threatening injuries, police said.
Another man was stabbed in Chadwell Heath, east London, on Monday evening, while two boys, aged 13 and 15, were shot in the head in Harrow, North-West London, on Sunday in what police described as a “callous, reckless and brazen act”.
The younger boy, believed to have been a bystander, was discharged from hospital but the other boy is still undergoing treatment for non-life threatening injuries. Meanwhile, Rhyiem Barton, 17, was shot dead on Saturday in Southwark, south London.
Violent crime has soared in the capital this year, leading Scotland Yard to station extra police officers on the streets. More than 60 people have been killed since January 1.
The surge has attracted international attention, with United States President Donald Trump saying on Friday he had read about a UK hospital that sounded like a war zone.
“There’s blood all over the floors of this hospital,” Mr Trump told the National Rifle Association, although he did not identify his source nor the name of the hospital.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he refused to accept that nothing could be done to stem the rise of violent crime across the capital and country.
“There’s no culture that should accept or condone criminality and what we have to do is make sure we invest in young people,” Mr Khan told the BBC yesterday.
“The famous lines, ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’, were accurate.”