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WHEN two 10-year-olds got into a fight about a computer game during lunch, it looked at first like just another childish squabble in the canteen.
But as one of the lads picked up a blade and plunged it into the stomach of the other, shocked onlookers were given a vivid reminder of the knife crime epidemic that is now infiltrating our schools.
Anti-violence campaigner Alison Cope – who lost her own son to knife crime – was told about the incident as she gave a talk to pupils at a school she has asked us not to name in Stoke-on-Trent last year.
Shockingly, experts are now warning that one in 20 children has carried a blade and the scourge is spreading to kids of all ages.
The figures come amid a crackdown on online deliveries following the horrific murders of three young girls in Southport by Axel Rudakubana, who was able to buy his deadly weapon on Amazon in seconds.
In an exclusive interview, Alison, 50, tells The Sun that Britain’s schools are becoming breeding grounds for knife violence, fuelled not just by crime gangs but also social media feuds that are now being settled with bloodshed in the playgrounds.
She explains: “The youngest we’ve seen was in year four, so about eight or nine years old. That kid was scared of being stabbed or attacked themselves.
“They brought the knife into school and showed it to their friend. That friend told someone else and then the teacher found out.
“It wasn’t brought in to be used, it was brought in out of fear. They’d had an argument online with someone and that is very common now.
“Kids are talking through TikTok and the games they play online and everyone is a keyboard warrior.”
“Children fall out over the internet and that carries over into the classroom.
“The most shocking incident was when I went to a primary school last year and there was an argument between two year six kids, which is the last primary year.
“It was an argument over a game they had been playing outside school, but it all kicked off in the canteen.
“One kid got that angry that he grabbed a knife and went to stab the other kid in the stomach.
“Luckily, it was a primary school knife, plastic with no sharp edges, but the staff were shocked because of what it could have been.
“It made contact with the stomach but didn’t go in because it was plastic. If it was on the skin it might have been sharp enough to cause an injury.”
Alison’s shocking report comes after 14-year-old schoolboy Kelyan Bokassa was stabbed to death on a 472 bus in an area of south-east London described as a “war zone.”
He was the first teenager to be killed in the capital this year, but joins a long line of previous child victims.
Two-thirds of teens in England and Wales now have a fear of violence, according to a survey by the Youth Endowment Fund.
Last year, the charity found that 20 per cent of teenagers have been victims of violence in the previous 12 months.
Thirty years ago you would run for a fight outside school and it would all be a big laugh. But that’s changed now and getting into a fight is very dangerous
The same survey of 10,000 children aged 13-17 found that 22 per cent of kids reported difficulties sleeping, reduced appetite and concentrating in school, as they were so scared of being attacked.
One third of teenagers – 33 per cent – reported avoiding areas, whilst around 27 per cent said they alter their travel routes or avoid public transport altogether to stay safe.
And five per cent of all 13-17 year olds – or one in 20 – reported carrying a weapon in the past year.
That figure jumps to 21 per cent for those suspended from school and 36 per cent for children who had been excluded from school.
Alison started campaigning against knife crime after her rapper son Joshua Ribera, 18, was stabbed in the heart near a nightclub in Birmingham, where she still lives, in 2013.
The teenager who killed Joshua – Armani Deniro Mitchell – was jailed for a minimum of 18 years in 2014.
Alison now tours the country speaking at schools and prisons to try to convince young people not to pick up a blade.
She added: “Kids are sick to death of hearing, ‘Don’t carry a knife, you could go to prison,’ because they are so desensitised.
“So, I do it in a different way.
“I don’t introduce myself. I talk about the powers of the police, how they can access social media accounts and use that data to convict.
“That usually makes their ears stick up and listen.
“That leads me on to asking them a really important question, which is, ‘How has your experience of social media influenced your perception of the world?’
“They look at me confused and I say, ‘Let me put it another way, what percentage of others do you think carry a knife?’
“There hasn’t been a single school I have spoken in where the kids aren’t terrified.
“They will say anything from 40 per cent to 100 per cent.
“If it’s primary school, it’s always 90 per cent to 100 per cent.
I go into schools and kids are not feeling safe. The UK is absolutely terrified and that’s not turning a corner
Alison Cope
“They believe other teenagers are carrying murder weapons.
“I play a short video showing a news headline, but what they don’t know is that the headline is showing my son’s death.
“Then I say, ‘OK, this is the kind of thing you are exposed to that has led to you being so scared. But if you carry a knife out of fear, who in your family will destroy having made that choice?’
“They say, ‘My mum, my dad, my sister.’ I say, ‘Who do you think is the one person destroyed by that young man dying?’
“They say, ‘His mum, obviously.’
“And I say, ‘Well who do you think I am?’ Then bang and you’ve got them.”
Alison has been concerned by recent knife crime campaigns that, she says, have promoted the idea that the stabbing epidemic is being brought under control.
She said: “I don’t want to criticize certain celebrities, but some say we are turning a corner and we are absolutely not.
“I go into schools and kids are not feeling safe. The UK is absolutely terrified and that’s not turning a corner.
“Most 10 and 11-year-olds have mobile phones and what message are they seeing every day?
“Stabbings on buses and outside schools for such petty reasons.
“Then the subliminal messages are police cuts and no youth services, police not getting to a scene on time before a victim bleeds out.
“Thirty years ago you would run for a fight outside school and it would all be a big laugh. But that’s changed now and getting into a fight is very dangerous.
“So when a child starts secondary school, they genuinely think this is scary environment, which leads them to put a knife in their bag.
“They think, ‘I’m just going to take it in, obviously I’m never going to use it.’
“And then it gets found and they get a reputation and they get excluded and might have to move schools.”
The Ben Kinsella Trust – resources for parents https://benkinsella.org.uk/resources-for-parents
NSPCC – Advice and help for parents or anyone worried or concerned about a child.
www.nspcc.org.uk or 0808 800 5000
Crimestoppers – Help, advice and a means to give information anonymously to the police.
www.crimestoppers-uk.org or 0800 555 111
Help, advice and a means to give information anonymously to the police
Patrick Green of knife crime prevention charity the Ben Kinsella Trust agrees that it is often the perceived danger of being stabbed that leads kids to pick up a blade.
He said: “Young people are still being lured into criminality by gangs and being forced to carry knives to protect drugs – and those are the traditional routes into knife crime.
“But there is also now a really concerning route in that young people are genuinely fearful because of what they are seeing – and social media is normalising and glamourising knife crime.
“Children are seeing this on their social media feeds and then you hear about it on the news.
“You start to get concerned and then you think about how you can protect yourself.
“Schools are generally safe places and it’s unusual for a serious knife offence to take place there.
“However, a lot of knife attacks happen around the periphery of the school territory.
“And clearly the fact that 31 per cent of young people (according to a BBC survey) are worried about knife crime in school is concerning because they are going to be thinking about how to keep themselves safe.
“There is a real issue here that young people’s fear is real and we need to identify that and help them understand the realities of knife crime and how you do keep yourself safe.
“Despite the Zombie knife ban, we know that it’s still easy to get hold of them with no age verification.
“There has to be greater legislation to stop online sales of knives.
“I think the police do as good a job as they can with the resources they have.
“The challenge with knife crime is it’s not just a policing issue.
“It’s a criminal justice matter when someone carries and uses a knife to commit a violent act, but the propensity to carry a knife and tackling that is where the gap has been.
“Police have been taking knives off the street for sometime and the problem hasn’t been getting any better.”
Schoolboy stabbed to death
A 15-year-old boy was jailed for life last year after being found guilty of stabbing another schoolboy to death as he walked home from lessons.
Bardia Shojaeifard was ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years behind bars for the murder of Alfie Lewis, also 15.
Alfie was stabbed to death in front of pupils leaving a primary school in the Horsforth area of Leeds in November 2023.
Shojaeifard admitted stabbing Alfie with a 13cm-long knife he had brought from home, but denied murder and claimed he was acting in self-defence when he pulled out the blade.
But he was found guilty of murder at Leeds Crown Court in April last year. Judge Mr Justice Cotter removed reporting restrictions that prevented him from being identified after his sentencing in June.
He said lifting the defendant’s anonymity would help in the “vitally important debate about the scourge of knife crime, among young people in particular”.
Broken glass rampage
A 17-year-old was locked up for five years after a sustained attack on staff and pupils with pieces of broken glass.
Former pupil Louis Melotte struck a 12-year-old girl multiple times at The Birley Academy in Sheffield, before turning on a receptionist and youth worker when they intervened.
The teenager was found guilty of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent last year and had previously pleaded guilty to taking a bladed article into a school.
He was ordered to serve five years in youth detention with an extended five year licence period at Sheffield Crown Court.
Scissor mauling
A 15-year-old girl was stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors during an English lesson at a West Midlands school last February.
Chloe Fisher was left with a gaping wound, blood during down her face and cuts to her arms, hands and face after the incident at Wordsley School in Stourbridge, West Midlands.
A CT scan showed the blade had narrowly missed Chloe’s skull.
The alleged attack followed an altercation on a school trip, and a 16-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of assault with intent to cause serious harm.
The school said the incident was being dealt with through the schools ‘behaviour policy’ and that a full investigation was to take place.
Corridor attack
A 15-year-old boy was sentenced to 14 months detention after stabbing a teacher in a school corridor in 2023.
Maths teacher Jamie Samson was taken to hospital with a single wound after the attack at Tewkesbury Academy in Gloucestershire on 10 July.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted one count of unlawful and malicious wounding with intent to cause serious injury.
He was sentenced at Bristol Youth Court in September 2023 to youth detention for 14 months.
He had previously pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a bladed article following the attack.
Speaking about the attack and the four-hour lockdown at the academy that followed, District Judge Lynne Matthews said: “Isn’t this what you seen on TV in America? Not Tewkesbury.”
