Pupils on way home in greatest danger of attack
MORE than a fifth of children stabbed in London are attacked coming home from school, according to doctors.
They warned that there was a ‘significant peak’ between 4pm and 6pm on weekdays.
And the researchers called for schools to introduce a staggered finish to the day, to stop pupils leaving all at once.
They also said a visible police presence was needed at bus and train stations after school hours.
In a study, they examined the medical records of under-25s treated for stab wounds in London hospitals between 2004 and 2014.
They found 172 under-16s were stabbed in that time, of whom 22 per cent were attacked on a schoolday afternoon.
Among those aged 16 to 24, 11 per cent were stabbed in the same time frame.
The majority of attacks were within three miles of the victims’ homes, the figures show.
The report follows widespread concern about violence on Britain’s streets.
Just last Thursday, 15-year- old Jay Sewell was killed by a stab wound to the heart when he was attacked outside a takeaway in Bellingham, south-east London.
College student Malcolm MideMadariola, 17, was knifed to death outside Clapham South Tube station in front of fellow pupils at 4.30pm last Friday.
The researchers, led by doctors at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, said knife injuries had soared in recent years.
Between 2004 and 2014, the number of stab wounds treated in London hospitals increased by an average of 25 per cent each year.
Writing in the BMJ Open medical journal, the research team said: ‘ Interpersonal violence involving knives is a major public health problem.’
They analysed data on 1,824 young people who had been stabbed – of whom 172 were aged under 16, 861 were 16 to 19, and 791 were aged 20 to 24.
Timings and locations of stabbings were gathered from ambulance service data as well as registers of hospital trauma cases. The frequency of stab injuries rose sharply in the late teenage years, reaching a peak at age 18 before gradually declining.
The authors wrote: ‘In children, the spike in frequency in the late afternoon and early evening was attributable to incidents occurring on school days. The majority of stabbings in this time frame on school days occurred within 5km of home, which encompasses the average distance from home to school in children in London.’
The researchers, who also included experts from Newcastle University, London Ambulance Service and South East Coast Ambulance Service, said schools had to do more to help, adding: ‘The sharp increase in stab injuries between the ages of 14 and 16 sug- gests that educational programmes and other preventative interventions are best delivered in primary or early secondary education.
‘We have shown that assaults resulting in penetrating injuries occur in distinct age- related patterns.
‘Specifically, the period immediately after school accounts for a large proportion of incidents in children, and these predominantly occur close to home and school.
‘This represents an opportunity for targeted preventative strategies in this population.’
In their recommendation for more varied school-leaving times and a higher police presence at bus and train stations and takeaways at the end of the school day, they wrote: ‘Given the peak in incidents at the end of the school day, an attractive option is staggered release times from school, which could be coupled with a visible deterrent by law enforcement at transport hubs, eateries and other areas of pupil congregation after school.’