Youth killed amid London sales shoppers

An 18-year-old man has been stabbed to death as thousands of bargain hunters thronged one of London's busiest shopping streets.

The 18-year-old from south London was killed in the Foot Locker store on Oxford Street as hundreds of thousands of people shopped nearby on the opening day of the post-Christmas sales.

Police said it was too early to establish what the motive for the stabbing was.

Ten arrests have been made and a crime scene has been set up.

A forensics team erected a white tent in front of Foot Locker, overlooked by Christmas lights.

Confused Boxing Day bargain hunters and tourists were coming up to the police cordon to take pictures and ask officers what had happened.

Shoppers could be seen going in and out of shops near the crime scene, but a number of stores were forced to close.

An employee at the nearby Disney Store said: 'We are being quite badly affected, we are unlikely to open again today.'

Police said they were called about 1.45pm (0045 AEDT on Tuesday) to reports of a stabbing.

London Air Ambulance and London Ambulance Service also attended but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

A spokeswoman for the New West End Company, which represents local retail traders, declined to comment on the stabbing or the effect on retailers on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

But earlier, the company reported STG15 million ($A23 million) sales in the first three hours of the Boxing Day sales despite a drivers' strike on the London Underground.

Jace Tyrrell of the New West End Company said: 'As ever, the West End's Boxing Day sales have attracted shoppers in their hundreds of thousands.'

Senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne, from the Metropolitan Police's Homicide Command, later told reporters at the scene that the murder had taken place at the 'busiest place in the United Kingdom on the busiest shopping day'.

He said: 'A number of weapons have been recovered from that scene, whether I have got the murder weapon I don't know. There's an assortment of items but no guns.

'My officers and many other officers from the West End are looking to get as many witnesses as we possibly can and to get a full account of exactly why this happened.'

Dunne said it seemed that there had been a confrontation between two groups of youngsters and confirmed that 'a number of people' had been arrested.

'We are in the process of speaking to them and speaking to some witnesses who have already come forward.

'This is probably the busiest place in the United Kingdom right now on the busiest shopping day so it's been difficult for us to piece together what has happened and clear this area to do the job we are paid to do and work out a sequence of events here.

'The flipside of that is we have probably more witnesses than we would normally have and I'm very much looking forward to them coming and speaking to us.'

Police confirmed that another stabbing took place on Monday close to the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street, but could not say at this stage whether it was linked to the Oxford Street incident.

Source: http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=701068&vId=

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