London Evening Standard/London
A schoolboy was fighting for his life yesterday after being stabbed on a bus in an apparent ambush between warring pupils.
The 16-year-old was knifed seconds after boarding a 393 bus yards from the gates of Highbury Grove School in Islington.
Police say the boy was attacked following a row with another teenager. It was the fifth stabbing of a teenager in London in the past three days.
Teachers rushed to the boy’s aide before paramedics arrived in Highbury New Park and spent 20 minutes trying to revive him at about 3pm on Tuesday.
The London Air Ambulance landed on the school’s Astro Turf pitch and airlifted the teenager to hospital in east London where he was said to be in a “critical” but stable condition.
A boy in a black baseball cap and plain clothes was seen fleeing the scene through Spring Gardens Estate off Highbury New Park, according to witnesses.
Sources say the victim was not a pupil at Highbury Grove and it is unclear where he went to school.
Police later arrested a 15-year-old boy on suspicion of attempted murder. He was being questioned at a north London police station yesterday.
Residents and parents told of their shock at the attack outside the school.
Novelist Mark Cairns, who lives yards from where the bus stopped and whose 13-year-old son attends Highbury Grove School, said: “I heard a lot of noise and shouting. I went to make sure my son was okay.
“The medics were on the bus trying to save this kid’s life, pumping his chest. He was bleeding quite badly and I think he was unconscious.
They carried him off the bus and started treating him on the pavement. It was right outside my house.”
Durdane Uckac, 47, yesterday decided to walk her 14-year-old son Merdane to school in the light of the stabbing.
She told the Standard: “We were really shocked by what happened and I walked my boy to school because I was so scared for him.”