Knifemen kill victim in front of terrified children at youth club

TwO knifemen chased a 23-year- old into a youth club and stabbed him to death in an ‘appalling and premeditated’ attack.

The victim, named locally as Glendon Spence, is understood to have been involved in an argument with his attackers outside the club and was chased inside.

Police warned that young children inside the busy centre were likely to be left ‘shocked and traumatised’ by what they saw.

Some of those who fled from the Marcus Lipton youth centre in Brixton, south London, on Thursday evening were said to be aged just seven and eight and enjoying half-term.

Mr Spence was stabbed in the groin shortly before 6.45pm and died 45 minutes later despite the efforts of paramedics to save him.

The murder was the 13th in the capital this year and comes just three days after a 22-yearold was knifed to death at a house party near euston station.

Maxine Dawson, 46, who lives nearby, came to the scene just after the attack. She said those inside the club had described seeing two men wearing hoods running in with ‘big, sword-looking knives’. She added: ‘There were children, some seven or eight years old coming out of there. I can just imagine the way they are traumatised by what they saw.’

Sandra Smith, a carer who knew the victim, said her ‘heart bleeds’ over the death of Mr Spence, who she said was not involved in any gangs. She added: ‘My son was with him last night in the centre playing table tennis.

‘The victim’s name was Glendon, he was always at my house playing computer games. You have some boys giving trouble, but not him, nobody could say that he was a troublemaker. There’s nothing bad I can say about that boy.’

She described him as a ‘very quiet’ lad with a Jamaican background and said he was polite, always taking his shoes off before he came into her house.

Pastor Lorraine Jones, 46, a local community leader whose 20-year-old son Dwayne Simpson was stabbed to death in 2014, said the stabbing was ‘heart-wrenching’.

She said that the victim was not from the local area but ‘hung around at the youth club’.

DCI Mick Norman, from the Metropolitan Police’s homicide and major crime command, said: ‘This was an appalling attack on a young man in a youth centre – a place where he was entitled to feel safe.

‘All the early indications are that this attack was premeditated and targeted.’

he appealed for those in the centre at the time of the attack to get in touch. he stressed they could so anonymously, saying he realised ‘many of them will be shocked and traumatised by what they saw and perhaps fearful of potential reprisals if they speak to police’.

The youth club remained cordoned off yesterday as police carried out their investigation.

Detective Superintendent Sian Thomas described the attack as a ‘senseless loss of life’.

She added: ‘To take a young life at a place designed to help support and nurture young people is appalling.’