Surrey… Surbiton. Those words don’t connote to crime and death to me? Well, not if you had asked me 3 months ago it wouldn’t have. But maybe now it would.
I’ve lived in this house, on this road, in this town and in this community for my whole life along with my parents, brother two cats and a dog. London never seemed that close to me (despite it being a 15 minute train ride away), because it was sort of quiet here not like London. And the terrorist attacks and stabbings that happened in the big city seemed so estranged from the quaint life I was used to here in Surbiton. It was clear to me then, but more so now that that 15 minute train ride to London (where being stabbed was plausible) saved me many sleepless nights and fears whilst walking with my friends in town.
Now when the news headlines read “STABBING”, I am scared, I am scared for myself and my friends, for my little brother who’s now finding his own independence and also my parents and their innocence, because it seems that knives are out and they’re crawling closer and closer to me.
The first stabbing happened 5 months ago on Clearance Street, Kingston in the early hours of August 21st on a Saturday. A 17 year old boy named Kai Davies was stabbed and killed opposite to the cinema of which I go with my friends and my family. On the streets that he walked with his friends and his family. Two men have been charged with the murder, both men were aged 22 and appeared in custody on September 3rd. This attack was daunting yet unexpected. Little did I know that this would be the first of many.
10 days before Christmas on the 15th of December at around 7pm on Surbiton Road a stabbing of a 32 year old man was reported. Surbiton road. The same road that I have gone to school since the age of 5. The same shop that I have been in with friends, ate in with friends and laughed in with friends. This street and this shop is also the place that a man was stabbed, life was ended and pronounced dead at the scene. Later, a 27 year old man was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The third was not a stabbing but a violent brawl. It occurred on the 3rd of Jan outside McDonalds on Surbiton Road at 9pm.
The McDonald’s that I go to after school. The McDonalds that I meet friends in after early and cold rowing sessions for comfort and warmth, the same McDonald’s I celebrate with friends when we win a regatta or finish a series of tests. The streets where strewn with blood and half emptied first aid bags with bandaids and syringes blown down the street sodden with dirt and rain. The outcome of the fight is not yet clear a article however stated that “a young man was left fighting for his life”.
A local shop keeper stated how he assumed that it was a stabbing when I questioned him on the state of the street outside. This assumption shows the mark that the past events have left on locals leading them to believe the worst of their own town. Before leaving he said “we all need to be more careful than we have in the past”.
I did not have to hear on the news or from the internet that these such events had happened. These events happened in places that I drive, walk and run past daily. I saw the police cordons, I saw the bloodied tissues and the stranded paramedic bags on the street, I saw the ambulances and the sea of worried faces that walked past their so called ‘safe town’ next to a ‘safe café’ on a ‘safe street’. I was simply walking my dog all three times that this has happened.
