SCOURGE OF KNIFE CRIME IN CAPITAL
Between April 2020 and April 2021 police took 228 weapons off Cardiff’s streets. For each of these there is a person ready to use it – but at what cost? In this special report, Ffion Lewis looks at the reality of knife crime in the Welsh capital told by t
ON NOVEMBER 21 last year six people were hospitalised after a “violent incident” in Queen Street in Cardiff city centre.
Four days later, on November 25, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed in Canton at 10am in broad daylight as astonished parents finished the school run.
South Wales Police connected the incidents. They said they were “not random attacks” and lay at the hands of “teenage boys targeting each other”.
Nine days later and the violence hadn’t stopped. A 21-year-old was stabbed in Grangetown on December 4. Three days before Christmas, on December 22, a man from Ely was hospitalised with stab wounds. On January 15 this year a man was treated for puncture wounds after an attack in Splott.
In the summer of 2019 alone there were three knife murders. Fahad Nur, 18, died after being stabbed 21 times near Cathays train station. Asim Khan, 21, died after being stabbed in St Mary Street in July. Harry Baker, who was 17 and from the city, died from stab wounds in a brutal killing in Barry the following month.
The people of Cardiff – and Wales as a whole – watched on in horror. For most, knife crime was alien, foreign, a problem which belonged in London or Birmingham. But for those whose lives had already been torn apart by blades, the reality was finally bubbling to the surface.
The killing of Sean Kelly
A little more than two years previously, on July 12, 2017, Teresa Kelly had lunch with her son Sean on what seemed like an ordinary and run-ofthe-mill day. Hours later he was left fighting for his life in the middle of the street after being stabbed in a what a judge labelled a “vicious and unprovoked” attack by two men in Adamsdown.
Awoken by police officers on her doorstep, Teresa was taken to the University Hospital of Wales where Sean was on a life-support machine. He died days later, on July 16, and a pathologist found the cause of death to be multiple organ failure caused by blood loss because of the stab wound.
The 37-year-old father of two had been stabbed in his left leg, leaving a wound that was at least 5cm deep. As he stumbled to escape his attackers, he collapsed in the street while the two defendants cycled off into the night, leaving him bleeding.
By Teresa’s own admission, Sean was “no angel” but she says the way he was killed was “horrendous”.
“It doesn’t matter who you are – you don’t deserve to die like that. To be chased, to be stabbed and then to be left in the street,” said the 67-year-old.
“I saw Sean that morning, we had lunch together that day, and then to be told the next day that he was dying – how do you cope with that?”
The attackers, now known to be Aaron Bingham and Nicholas Saleh, were caught on CCTV riding bikes through Cardiff on the night of the attack. It also showed them fleeing the scene. One witness described hearing a man shout: “I will f****** kill you” while another heard: “I’m going to slice him up”.
Despite both denying the murder, in a trial the following year Bingham, then 18, was found guilty of murder and Saleh, at the time aged 46, was found guilty of manslaughter.
Bingham claimed Sean brought a knife to the scene and tried to rob him but the jury rejected his self-defence argument. Saleh, from Adamsdown Lane, accepted being in the general area but denied any responsibility, which was also rejected by the jury.
More than three years on since the convictions, Teresa says the atrocities which killed her son are more rife than ever in the city.
“Seeing it happening again and again brings it back – it makes me think about it,” she says. “I think the problem has got worse – kids are finding it an easier option. Rather than just deal with your grievances with your fists or an argument, they’re thinking knives are the easier option. Why get hurt yourself when you can just stab somebody and be done with it?”
Sean’s friend, who was with him the night he was murdered, said they had been “chilling” together at his home in Newport Road before going out to visit a friend. Teresa said she will never know why or who Sean was going to meet that night but believes he would never have turned to knife crime.
“I’ll never know what Sean was doing around that area at that time of the morning but I have to live with that. He had been in prison but whatever he had done he had done his time for. He loved life – he loved being out and about and happy and mixing with people. He couldn’t live a quiet life – he liked a happy-go-lucky life. And now, because of this, he will never see his two children grow up.”
Teresa, who has lived in Cardiff all her life, said the extent of knife crime in the city now makes her almost afraid to leave her home.
“I can’t understand when this happened, when people started carrying knives – I can’t understand why this is it now. I was born down the docks – the docks used to have a bad reputation but never what Cardiff is like today,” she said.
“Nowadays you’re too afraid to say anything to anybody because they could have a knife in their pocket, you could be killed.”
Teresa, who had four children including Sean, says she is most concerned about her teenage grandchildren who she worries will fall into the path of gangs and knife crime.
“All the under-20s now walking around thinking how big they are to have a weapon. They’re hearing about it in songs, on the telly. They think if you’ve got a knife nobody’s going to upset you.
“People who carry knives need to not just look at the person they have killed but look at the bigger picture. Was he a father? What will his children do now growing up without a father? That person is a son, a brother – it affects everyone.”
‘The worst thing I’d ever heard of’
Knife crime is by no means just a Cardiff problem. In 2018 Anthony Winter was fatally stabbed in woodland in the city after being lured to a property in Newport and “tortured” for more than six hours.
Cardiff Crown Court heard in 2019 how the 32-year-old dad was murdered after getting into debt to drug dealers who lured him to a flat where they punched, kicked and stamped on him.
Anthony was dragged by taxi back to Cardiff where he was stabbed in his right thigh, severing his femoral vein and artery, and left to die in Cath Cobb Woodlands in St Mellons.
He was found at around 7am by a member of the public on his way to the shops. He described the victim as badly injured and lying in a pool of blood.
A family member of Anthony, who wished not to be named, said: “What they did to Anthony was the worst thing I’d ever heard of.
“All of this was because he owed money – £500. He left a three-yearold daughter behind for this. Unfortunately his father got him on to drugs – it quickly gets out of control once you’re on it.”
The family member said Anthony would have been well-known to the dealers because of his prolific drug use and they would have preyed on his vulnerability.
“He was absolutely harmless – he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He owed them
money. I don’t know how it works but I know there’s a ringleader and these little runners going around and they got him. He was very, very vulnerable – they took advantage of that,” they said.
“I thought it was inevitable the way he was living. It was inevitable something awful like this would happen to him but it doesn’t mean it’s right.”
The family member, who is from Llanedeyrn, says the level of knife crime in the area in recent months has brought back the memories of Anthony’s horrific killing: “Seeing it happen again it just brings everything back. It’s unbelievable that this is happening still.
“And it’s getting so much worse. I’ve lived here for over 40 years – I used to walk the streets no trouble but now absolutely no way. I don’t feel safe at all because of it.
“It’s not just the victim that gets affected, it’s everybody. It’s even the people who are [using knives]. The three people who went to prison for Anthony – their lives have been destroyed, their families’ lives have been destroyed, our life has been destroyed.”
Witnessing a murder
The effects of knife crime permeate every part of the community. It is not as arbitrary or simple as victim or perpetrator. Every victim is somebody’s child, parent, sibling, friend or colleague, as is each perpetrator.
But for each crime there is a witness – whether that be one committing the crime or an innocent bystander.
In the case of the murder of Lynford Brewster, a 29-year-old who was stabbed to death in broad daylight and left in a pool of blood on the ground, a key witness was a 13-year-old boy.
On Sunday, June 12, 2016, Jack Pocock – now aged 19 – was getting ready for the school week ahead when he heard shouting on the street outside his home on the Brynfedw housing estate in Llanedeyrn.
In a matter of seconds Lynford had been fatally stabbed to death.
Despite the best efforts of the emergency services Lynford was “totally unresponsive” and was pronounced dead at 7.45pm. A 7cm-deep stab wound was found in his back which caused “very substantial bleeding” into the chest cavity, causing a “massive haemorrhage”, and the left lung was collapsed. There were also stab wounds to the backs of his legs.
As if Lyndon’s murder wasn’t difficult enough for the family and witnesses to deal with, the verdicts in the initial case were quashed after a detective failed to declare she knew a juror who had tried the defendants.
Dwayne Edgar, Jake Whelan, and Robert Lainsbury were convicted of knifing expectant father Lynford in a “callous, cold-blooded” killing.
But a family liaison officer, Detective Constable Rebecca Bryant, who sat with Mr Brewster’s loved ones during the December trial at Cardiff Crown Court in 2016, never flagged up that her son’s girlfriend was sitting on the jury.
As a result, the trio – who were initially sentenced to a combined 90 years behind bars for the killing before their minimum terms were reduced on appeal – saw their convictions overturned at London’s Court of Appeal.
All three have now been found guilty of 29-year-old Mr Brewster’s murder by a new jury at Bristol Crown Court following a retrial which was ordered when their initial convictions were quashed.
Jack, a young teenager but a key eyewitness, gave evidence at both trials. The trauma of witnessing the murder, as well as the subsequent trials, has left him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Jack’s mother, Sharon Pocock, says that while Jack was only a witness, the stabbing has changed his life.
“He was a very outgoing, bubbly lad but after that night he became a very inward, closed-off version of himself. Things that wouldn’t usually faze him did. It affected his schooling. Due to erratic behaviour as a result of being diagnosed with PTSD, he was removed from high school so his education was affected as a result of what he saw.
“The first sign of any conflict or argument or anything like that would just set him off, he’s going into a massive state of panic.”
Jack’s trauma was so bad that for months after the incident the family were forced to keep the curtains drawn on all windows looking out of the front of the house on to the street where the murder happened. Jack would also not use the property’s front door.
“He had to move schools. We had to ask the council to rehouse us because the memories of where we were living was just too much for him. He was put into counselling and was back and forth there. It had a huge impact on the family.”
Less than a fortnight after Lynford was murdered Sharon was due to have major brain surgery. During the surgery she suffered a major stroke. She spent more than four weeks in hospital.
“With the stress of what he’s seen [Jack] also had that – another massive trauma. I wasn’t able to be there to support him emotionally – it was more emotional trauma for him at such a young age,” she said.
Despite the trauma Jack gave evidence in both trials – something Sharon says has made him an “absolute inspiration to anyone of that age that sees anything like that”.
While Jack still struggles with the trauma, he has trained as a mechanic and recently become a dad. Sharon says he doesn’t talk about the murder often but admits it has had a huge impact on his life.
“He still finds it hard to talk about it. One of the reasons I had to move away was because if we stayed there he would never get over it, we could never progress on,” said Sharon.
“He does sometimes say that he will never forget it and it annoys him seeing all these youngsters carrying knives and that it’s scary.
“It wasn’t a nice day for anybody concerned – especially Lynford’s family. His mother is a fighter. I couldn’t imagine walking a day in her shoes.”
Sharon says that despite growing up in Cardiff she has never known the level of knife crime to be so bad in the city. Since April 1 this year the dedicated Operation Sceptre team at South Wales Police has arrested 143 people and seized 35 weapons.
“I’ve never known it to be so bad in all my life,” said Sharon. “You hear about it now much more than before. Growing up in Cardiff as a child myself, you very rarely heard of it. But now, I mean, you hear about it on a daily basis – if not maybe a few times a week. It’s not just kids but anyone in general who picks up a knife and takes it out and intends to use it needs to think it’s not just that person that you’re going to use it on – it’s yourselves, your family, everybody, and look at the whole bigger picture because it is life-changing.”
What it’s like to be stabbed
Between April 2020 and April 2021 the Operation Sceptre team in Cardiff and Swansea run by South Wales Police took 228 weapons off the streets, seized £4.47m worth of drugs and £486,000 in cash, and made 532 arrests.
The specialist team has been set up by Wales’ biggest force in an attempt to crack down on knife crime across the country.
And while it’s easy to assume each of these crimes have been committed shrouded in nightfall, with gangs stalking the streets to avenge drug debts, the reality is utterly different.
A 30-year-old, who has asked to remain anonymous, was walking his two dogs in the Llanrumney area of Cardiff when he said he was approached by three men. The men allegedly tried to take the dog but the owner fought back.
“There were three men coming the other way – one of them was clicking his tongue to get my labrador to go towards him, which he did,” he said.
“One of the men grabbed the lead. I didn’t let go initially and thought, ‘What are you doing?’ But then of the two people next to him, one of them took a knife out of his pocket and stuck it right next to my eye and was just saying, ‘Drop the lead’. They still had the knife. I had a few seconds of just trying to take in what was going on.”
The dog owner said he tried to fight against the men – all while wondering why he hadn’t been stabbed.
“We got into a scuffle and ended up on the floor. But by this point the guy behind me was the one with the knife. I was just waiting for him to stab me. I was just hoping he wasn’t going to put it in my neck.
“I was expecting it but it wasn’t coming. He was trying to drag me off the other guy and was kicking and punching me but I wouldn’t let go – it was the only thing I could do really.
“Whilst he was trying to drag me off he slashed my face. I’ve got a cut now running all the way from my forehead down my face. It just missed my eye. I don’t fully remember it, I just remember feeling hot on my face.”
Despite his injuries the man managed to fight off the men and both he and his dogs escaped to the main path where they came across another dog walker who helped them phone the police.
“I was surprised at first when I saw the knife. I was surprised when I saw it but then was even more surprised when I wasn’t stabbed. The one who had the knife was about 20,” he said.
At the time South Wales Police released an e-fit image of the three suspects who it is believed walked through Pentwyn and Llanrumney before and after the attempted robbery. The victim says the suspects have yet to be found and the investigation is ongoing.
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The role of anti-knife groups
While the police operation is undoubtedly taking dangerous weapons off the street each day, ordinary citizens have started to take knife crime in Cardiff into their own hands in a bid to solve the problem.
One of these people is Marc, a founder and chief co-ordinator of Cardiff-based knife crime prevention group PTKD, who has requested we do not use his surname.
PTKD, which stands for Put the Knives Down, was formed in the wake of the murder of Harry Baker, who was chased and stabbed by a group of people in Barry in 2019.
Two founding members of the group, Marc and Gerard Bermingham, are close friends of the Bakers and set up the organisation after witnessing the heartache caused by the murder.
Gerard’s brother Adrian was also killed in a brutal stabbing in 2004. As part of processing his death, Gerard visited the murderer in prison and is also heavily involved in PTKD, as we reported on Saturday.
“There were a lot of youths who wanted to seek revenge for those who had caused Harry harm,” said Marc.
“So we kind of stepped in and came up with something for the kids to do rather than seek revenge. We did some fundraising for Harry’s family and got all of the kids involved – so sponsored bike rides, football and things like that.
“What PTKD does in effect is raise awareness about knife crime. We also speak to families affected by knife crime and try to assist them in the best way possible.”
Marc said that his phone line is open 24 hours a day and that the group has successfully built up such a rapport in the community that they often receive early warnings about planned violent disorders.
“We get told about the planning – we share on the page and then parents search their kids’ bags and things before they go out. We like to think it’s had an effect because every time a post like that goes out, like an early warning, the events get cancelled.
“We’re trying to raise awareness for the families – we use it as sign-posting. When we receive a call we then pass them on to the relevant agencies but also keep in touch with them to make sure they are okay.”
A major part of the work PTKD does is to campaign to open more youth centres as well as hold activities warning of the dangers of knife crime to make sure that young people are engaging in a positive and constructive way. They hope that by drawing people into the centres they will be off the streets and away from knife crime.
“The kids were turning up to these youth centres but had nothing to do. So we have been getting volunteers to go round to these places to hold different activities and things. For example, I do survival training because my full-time job I’m in the Army. Marvin, another founder, was running music workshops with the Prince’s Trust and the kids really look up to him and are engaged. We’ve also done acting workshops; we’ve had really successful mechanic workshops.”
Despite the success of the workshops, Marc says the influx of county lines drug dealers operating in n Cardiff and recruiting youngsters s is continually growing.
“There’s drugs, earning g money, younger kids running drugs for the older kids – it all gets them in. I usually take a knife box with us and some of the things that have been handed in are mental. We dispose of them then through the police.
“Kids are being intercepted –I – I had a phone call from a concerned erned parent who said there were loads ads of kids chasing one around Roath th and d they had a machete and an axe. Luckily I was working nearby and jumped out and eventually managed to talk them around. They handed me a 30in machete and an axe – and the kid was from Merthyr Tydfil and was trying to muscle in on their turf. So we have had direct interception.
Marc says he has seen knife crime turn into an “epidemic”. The youngest child he has engaged with regarding knife crime and carrying weapons was 11 years old.
“Knife crime, especially in the last two to three years, it’s 100% become an epidemic and I think the government and the council need to recognise it. Thankfully it had died down a bit with Covid but it is something that needs to be addressed,” said Marc.
“The police are doing everything they can with the resources they’ve been given. We’re not anti-police – we’d like to work alongside them.”
Marc says that young people involved in knife crime are much more likely to approach a community-led knife prevention group rather than go to police: “The kids trust us – they send us information which we can then tell the police for them to react accordingly.”
The policing perspective
South Wales Police assistant chief constable David Thorne said: “Levels of knife offences in the UK have risen over the last few years and south Wales is no different to anywhere else in that respect.
“Thankfully levels of those offences remain lower here than many other parts of the UK and, generally, south Wales is a safe place. But even one instance of knife crime is one too many and tackling the harm that knife crime causes is an absolute priority for South Wales Police. The effects using a knife can have are devastating and those who carry a knife need to remember the impact their actions could have for themselves, for others, for their family and friends, and for the wider community.
“We are here to keep people as safe as possible, and our teams are working hard eve every day
to reassure re our communities and to disrupt the small minority who are intent on carrying knives, especially where the most vulnerable are put at risk. Our dedicated Op Sceptre teams are having a really positive impact and we are also using stop-search in a fair and proportionate manner to ensure our streets are as safe as possible.
“However, we are also determined to address the root causes of knife crime and are working closely with the Wales Violence Prevention Unit and other partners – including education services and trading standards – as part of a public health approach to the issue of knife crime to prevent people from carrying knives in the first place.
“We also engage with members of the community, including young people, to emphasise the fact that picking up a knife is always the wrong choice. Not only will carrying a knife not protect you but it will actually make you much less safe. If someone gets involved in an incident and pulls out a knife, that knife could be used against you.
“Please think about this if you carry a knife. Please think how you would feel if someone you care about saw you carrying a knife, copied you, and something later happened to them. Please think about how your future could be ruined if you are caught carrying or using a knife. If you have concerns about knife crime, or you think someone might be carrying a knife, please have a conversation with them. Please also speak to us if you think someone is carrying a knife – it can be difficult but it will help ensure that that weapon can’t be used to cause serious injury or worse.
“If you prefer, you can contact Crimestoppers completely anonymously. Crimestoppers never ask for any personal information and won’t track your device. But passing any information to police or to Crimestoppers could help take a knife off the street – and, ultimately, could save a life.”