One person dead, five injured in stabbing rampage

A MAN with a history of mental illness was last night being held by police after a stabbing spree left one person dead and five injured.

The apparently random attacks took place during an hour-long “terrible morning” of violence in north London. The 30-year-old knife man was eventually caught outside his Harringay home in the blood-spattered red Hyundai car he had used to drive from one victim to the next.

Police Chief Superintendent Simon O’Brien said: “It seems the suspect was getting out of his vehicle, picking people at random, stabbing them and then getting back in his vehicle. We don’t know the motivation for the attacks at this stage.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.”

He added: “There appears to be no link between the victims. They were also a cross-section in terms of ethnicity. It has been a terrible morning.”

A knife has been recovered by detectives.

Each person was stabbed once or twice each and the stabbings took place so quickly that some people carried on walking thinking they had been punched.

Last night a pool of blood marked the spot where the attacker began his rampage outside the Harringay Green Lanes railway station.

The first victim, aged 33, staggered up to the building and collapsed on the bench before police were alerted and he was taken to hospital.

Just over an hour later a 58-year-old man was found suffering from stab injuries in Advent Way, Edmonton. The victim, who police say was married with children, later died in Whipps Cross hospital.

In the meantime two men, aged 49 and 50, and a 33-year-old woman had also been stabbed and were taken to North Middlesex hospital where later that morning a 76-year-old man walked in after being knifed in Empire Avenue.

Surgeons at the London Heart Hospital were last night battling to save the woman’s life while the other four injured people were in a stable condition. She had been cycling when she was attacked and initially carried on going not realising what had happened to her.

Dr Yasmin Drabu, medical director at North Middlesex, said all five had suffered potentially life-threatening stab wounds to the stomach and abdomen.