An unnamed 16 year old has been charged with the murder of 18 year old Charles Hendricks, according to the BBC.
Mr Hendricks was found stabbed on 24 August by police. He was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital where he died from his injuries.
The local Olympic handover celebrations were cancelled as a result, as the
crime scene had been near where the local civic celebration had been planned to take place. Since the murder a number of arrests had been made in a tense atmosphere among a minority of interested people in central Walthamstow, though, for most people, life has carried on as usual.
I shall be interested to eventually see a description of the young man charged here in Walthamstow. The family has publicly stated their belief this was not a gang related 'black on black' crime, though they seem to accept he had an undefined 'association' with youth gangs at some level.
One of Tony Blair's parting gifts to the Brown government last year was a statement that claimed what was then a 'spate' of murders, was due to black culture. With 3 fatal stabbings locally in under six weeks, and others in Liverpool, Rotherham and Hackney in the last couple of days, the spate of youth killings seems to have now have become a torrent. If the Hendricks murder is being treated by police as yet another one of the 'black on black' gang killings which Ministers have been accused of allowing to happen by Dr Derrick Campbell, I expect interesting discussions inside the council and among the wider local community as to how to respond to a policing strategy which doesn't work. In any event, something has got to change.