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Knife gang threatens woman stallholder
A GANG of youths who were refused service when they tried to buy offensive weapons from a Camden Town market stall pulled a knife on the terrified manageress.
Six men demanded to be sold pocket knives and weed cutters from the Blue Skin Tattoo Parlour on Camden High Street.
They threatened to use a pocketknife to stab the manageress and her husband, Andy Weale, who rushed to help her.
Mr Weale, 37, who was at his stall just up the road in Camden High Street, and lives in Alma Street in Kentish Town, said: "There were six of them, they were about 17 or 18 and they demanded to be sold knives.
"Four ran off but when I arrived they said what are you going to do. Then one of them threatened me with a knife.
"He shoved me really hard and I was pushed backwards. The police came and took one of them away, but it has been distressing."
Police arrested one male who has been bailed to return to the station on October 6.
But the incident last Thursday (September 23) has put the spotlight back on the problems of young people carrying and using knives in Camden.
It follows another case of a 27 year-old man stabbed five times in the back and left stranded in Kings Cross by a youth attacker last Tuesday (September 21). He was operated on shortly after the incident and his condition is not believed to be life threatening.
Last week the Ham&High reported how a 13-year-old girl was held at knifepoint in an attempted robbery on Hampstead Heath.
In the last month alone there have been 16 attacks using offensive weapons in Camden - one every two days.
A Youth Justice survey last year found that carrying a knife was the most common offence among children excluded from school.
Abdul Hai, a Camden youth worker for Kings Cross Brunswick Road Residents Association, told the Ham&High he has confiscated knives from Camden teenagers at the youth center in Marchmont Street.
He said: "Use of knives is on the increase in Camden.
"You get young kids carrying weapons, as it seems quite cool. It is the way it is now.
"It is very simple to get access to them, whether they are switch knifes or plain kitchen knives.
"Some do use them in situations, while others don't. But it is just about protecting themselves a lot of the time.
"Now even the youngest children carry them."
Mr Hai said knives have been central in a campaign of violence between Cromer Street and Bengali youths over four years in Kings Cross.
Mr Hai, who has worked with some of the children involved, said: "Though things are quiet now, when things do kick off, it makes the situation that much more dangerous."
A Camden police spokesman said: "There has always been special legislation around knives. There has not been much of an increase or a decrease in the use of them."
Jonathan Marciano
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