TEENAGE BOY MURDERED

Victim: Yemurai Lovemore Kanyangarara, 16, was knifed in broad daylight

An investigation is under way into the murder of a teenage boy who was stabbed to death in a south east London street.

Onlookers described blood 'pouring' out of 16-year-old Yemurai Lovemore Kanyangarara's neck moments after he was knifed in broad daylight yesterday.

One witness said he watched the boy's life 'slip away' as he lay on the pavement on Upper Wickham Lane in Welling.

Police attended the scene at about 5pm following reports of the stabbing, but ambulance crews, including an air ambulance, were unable to save Yemurai and he died later in hospital.

A male was arrested in connection with the stabbing and is in custody at a south London police station, Scotland Yard said.

A web page set up in Yemurai's memory said the teenager, from Belvedere, Kent, enjoyed playing football and attended St Columba's School in Bexleyheath.

Sam Pope, 19, who works at Bartletts florist next door to the Superdrug, told how she discovered the teenager bleeding to death on the street and saw three boys fleeing the scene.

'I had just gone outside for a cigarette when I saw blood on the ground,' she said.

'It was not a very nice scene. The boy was standing up and I saw blood absolutely pouring out of his neck.'

She helped him down to the floor and called emergency services.

While waiting for them to arrive, her colleague flagged down an ambulance, she said.

Young life lost: Forensic officers at the scene in Upper Wickham Lane in Welling where Yemurai was stabbed

'The ambulance was on its way to hospital but it stopped and the paramedics helped him,' Miss Pope said.

But it was too late to save the boy.

'He was silent and had his eyes open,' Miss Pope said.

'It all happened so quickly.'

Angela Read, 48, who owns the florist and joined Miss Pope at the scene, described the futile efforts she and other local shop workers made to save the teenager's life.

'Someone from inside Superdrug threw out kitchen towels and a woman from Loose Linen [a shop across the road] brought out some towels,' she said.

'We tried to suppress the bleeding but if you had been a top professional you wouldn't have saved the lad.

'There was blood all over the pavement and we watched his life slip away in front of us.'

David Walker, 83, said a bike and crash helmet lay on the ground within the area being guarded by police.

'We were horrified,' he said.

Horror: The teenager was rushed to hospital after the stabbing on Upper Wickham Lane, but died of his injuries

'Nobody could say it's quiet around here but nothing like this has happened here before.'

Last night a senior detective described the killing as 'about as bad as it gets'.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne said Yemurai's murder was among the worst he had investigated in 25 years.

DCI Dunne told reporters: 'You've got someone 16-year-old, a schoolboy, being stabbed in broad daylight in a busy street in front of many many shoppers out enjoying the afternoon. It's about as bad as it gets.

'It's among the very worst I've investigated in 25 years, the sheer brutality against a defenceless schoolboy.'

The officer told how the victim, who was brought to Britain from Zimbabwe when he was a toddler, stepped off a 96 bus with a friend and was attacked, probably within a matter of seconds.

Scene of the crime: A forensic scientist works into the night after the fatal stabbing

Three boys who had been in a group of five or six who had got off another 96 at an earlier stop a few minutes before had walked to the stop where Yemurai and his friend got off their bus.

Yemurai and his friend had been in a group of four but the other two got off the bus shortly before.

'The three boys off the first bus approached them, and one has taken a weapon out of his clothing and stabbed the victim just once in the neck. This has caused catastrophic injuries, it seems he has died very quickly after that,' DCI Dunne said. He was unable to confirm whether the weapon was a knife.

Police so far have no clear motive for the attack, but DCI Dunne said it was suspected that the people who attacked Yemurai knew him.

'It would be wrong to suggest this was a random attack, our belief is that they were known to each other, but we don't know how,' he said.

According to police, Yemurai had been living with his father in Leicester, but had returned to his mother in London to take his GCSE exams.