Man stabbed to death in North London as Met Police launch 81st murder investigation of 2018

Officers find victim after reports of a brawl between men armed with baseball bats

A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder following a stabbing at a seafront park in Bogor Regis. (PA)

Scotland Yard has launched its 81st murder investigation of the year after a 20-year-old man was found fatally stabbed after reports of a fight.

London's Metropolitan Police said officers were called shortly after 6.30pm to reports of a brawl between men armed with baseball bats in Edmonton, north London.

The man had stab wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene despite the efforts of paramedics.

"At this early stage officers retain an open mind as to motive," a force spokesman said.

Further crime scenes remained open in nearby Brettenham Road and Cameron Close and officers are trying to identify the man's next of kin, he added.

His death came within hours of Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt warning that "feral” knife attacks in which victims are stabbed multiple times with vicious weapons including machetes were driving up London's murder rate.

Speaking at the London Knife Crime Summit, he said: “The violence is getting greater. If I was stood here five years ago, I would probably be talking about knife offences where there was generally a single puncture wound.

"We are now routinely seeing multiple stabbings. That is one individual stabbing somebody multiple times," he said. "And increasingly seeing group offending as well. By that I don't mean there's a group and one person is stabbing, I mean there's a group of people who are all using weapons.

"Some of the CCTV footage that we see is shocking and quite frankly feral when you look at a group of individuals bearing down on another person.”

Earlier this week The Independent exclusively revealed that police are failing to solve 63 per cent of knife crimes committed against under-25s as stabbing incidents soar.

So far this year in London alone there have been 21 youth murders – while knife crime against young victims across England and Wales has surged by 69 per cent in the last four years.

Figures obtained through freedom of information requests show the overall number of knife incidents against victims under the age of 25 surged from 3,857 in 2013-14 to 6,503 in the year to March 2018. The number of knife-related incidents involving youth that led to no further action by police increased in the past four years from 33 per cent to 63 per cent.

The number of these crimes that led to criminal charges plummeted, with the proportion of perpetrators who faced charges falling from more than one in three (35 per cent) to just 15 per cent, raising questions about why a growing number of these crimes are going unsolved despite the rise in young people getting caught up in knife violence.

Other outcomes included youth cautions and community resolutions. Collated from responses by 21 out of 43 police forces, the data paints a stark picture of the knife crime epidemic gripping the nation. All the forces were approached but many refused to hand over their figures.