A bloody weekend (From Haringey Independent)

A bloody weekend

10:36am Monday 25th June 2007

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It’s been a bloody weekend on our streets.

On Friday night a man in his 20s was shot to death in Acton. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

In the early hours of Saturday morning a 23-year-old man was stabbed to death at The Works club in Kingston.

And 17-year-old Annaka Keniesha Pinto from Upper Edmonton was shot at The Swan pub and club in Tottenham at 5am on Saturday. She died in hospital later that day.

I’m not sure whether I am scared more by the fact that people are now using weapons with such ease or that we have become so seemingly immune to it all that we barely flinch when we hear about it.

Three people lost their lives in one weekend in one city completely unnecessarily and one of them was in this borough. Weapon use is clearly out of control and unfortunately you could take a snapshot of most weekends in London and paint a similar picture.

We cannot just accept that this is ‘street’ culture and that we are powerless to change it. Knives and guns are not the route to solving petty problems. Losing lives in this way should not be happening at all. We must arm ourselves with our own legal weaponry and fight against this kind of crime on our streets before it reaches real epidemic proportions.

Accepting it is not an option. Then what happens when it’s someone you know and love?