BLIGHTING OUR TOWNS AND CITIES
DR MARK NASH WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE MEDIC
as streams of his blood stain the streets. It may not sound life-threatening but Mark says a wound on the leg can be just as fatal as the chest.
It would be easy to dismiss all knifecrimes as gang-related. But it’s not so simple. Mark says the availability of sharp instruments as weapons and the underestimation of their power makes the issue so widespread.
“Recently we were called to a fatal incident after an altercation where the stab wound to the chest was only a centimetre wide,” Mark tells me over
more macho, some bravado.’”
Despite the astonishing rise of knife crime in London, the West Midlands is facing a very real crisis of its own.
The Home Office confirmed last year that the region has seen the biggest spike in knife crime outside of the capital, with the number of incidents increasing by more than 1,000 year-on-year since 2014.
And for the doctors and paramedics who treat the victims, it’s an epidemic it the loud whir of sirens. “People think, ‘Well, if I wound someone I might be a bit might give me of violence they are all too aware could reach their own families.
As a dad of three teenage boys, Mark says he worries about the prevalence of knife crime among younger generations. “Of course, I do think when we are sent out to treat an 18-year-old lad with stab wounds, ‘That could be my son’.”
And it’s easy to see why. Deaths among teenagers and younger children have reached a 40-year high in the region, with more per head in the West Midlands police area than in London last year, with up to 280 kniferelated offences a month.
The last teenager to be killed in the region was Jaydon Washington James, from Coventry, who was stabbed two weeks before his 16th birthday.
RDR MARK NASH AMBULANCE DOC Blood stains the pavement after a knife attack Jaydon Washington James Machetes found by cops in Walsall since start of year
ecorded offences with blades in general were up 6% in a year in 2018, as the West Midlands murder rate hit a 10-year high. Already in 2019, 34-year-old Stuart Roe was stabbed to death on a street in Halesowen, in the Black Country.
West Midlands Police is trying its best to tackle the problem, despite facing cuts of £175million since 2010.
One of the most shocking knife crimes in the region from the past year was the killing of Mylee Billingham, 8, whose dad William stabbed her to death in his home near Walsall after flying into a rage when her mother started a new same-sex relationship.
Mark says: “You get a call in like that and you think, ‘Why would anyone do that?’, but you can’t rationalise it. Bad things happen to good people.”
But for Robert, who is a dad of two young children, and Mark there is no obvious solution to the problem.
He pauses for moment before his radio starts buzzing again with his next call-out, adding optimistically: “Hopefully there will be a sea change.”
Who knows how many more deaths the region will face before that sea change takes place.
People think, ‘Well, if I wound someone I might be a bit more macho, give me some bravado’
When we treat a lad with stab wounds I think ‘That could be my son’. It does affect you emotionally