Masefield Avenue, Stanmore stabbing: Woman held dying victim
Police cordoned off Masefield Avenue and Chenduit Way in Stanmore, following a fatal stabbing on Monday (September 4).
Emergency services were first spotted at Masefield Avenue shortly after 4.50pm and a man, whose age has not been disclosed at this time, was found with a stab injury to the chest .
The brave woman, 60, had just got off the bus at Uxbridge Road, when she caught the end of what appeared to be a fight between two young males.
Police in Masefield Avenue, Stanmore (Image: Raffi Berg)
Speaking to the Harrow Times, she said she kept on walking until she noticed that one man “fell funny” and she felt something wrong had happened.
At closer inspection, she found a young adult man “in the gutter, bleeding”, the woman recalled.
She said: “I could see there was a wound to his upper left chest and he was unconscious, he was just not responding at all.
“He was breathing but he was unresponsive, then the paramedics told me to give him CPR which I didn’t have a clue about – I’ve never come across anything like that before. I was just giving him CPR and pumping his chest until the paramedics got there.”
From what she was told at the scene, the man – who was reportedly aged 19 – had been stabbed three times to the chest.
An ambulance was in Stanmore after the fatal stabbing (Image: Raffi Berg)
The victim’s friend was also at the scene and was yelling “he’s dead” while the woman tried to follow the paramedic’s instructions.
The woman claimed that the ambulance “took a while to get there” but confessed “in a moment like that anything feels longer than it is”.
Police in Stanmore (Image: Raffi Berg)
Later on in the evening, the woman returned to the scene and approached the victim’s mother, who is local to the area, and assured her that someone was by her son’s side in his last moments.
“I still wish I could have gone back ten seconds earlier, could I have done more?”, she said.
Despite the terrifying series of events last night, the woman is confident that it was a “one off situation” given the rarity of knife crime in Stanmore.
A forensics tent in Stanmore (Image: Raffi Berg)
She said: “You don’t – especially around here – you don’t expect to see someone dying in the gutter at all. It’s getting closer and closer every time.
“It happens anywhere these days, the best of areas.”
Raffi Berg, a journalist who lives in the area, said there was a “a large crowd” gathering around the scene and wondering what was happening.
He continued: “Some bystanders were visibly shocked. You could see a small blue tent at the spot where the attack happened but the road and the next road along had been cordoned off.
“I haven’t seen anything like it round here before, this is a safe neighbourhood, so the sight of police and forensics all over the place was quite alarming.”
Any witnesses or anyone with any information is asked to call police on 101 or contact via X, formerly known as Twitter, on @MetCC quoting reference CAD5493/04SEP.
Alternatively information can be shared anonymously on 0800 555 111.