This happened near to my daughter's flat - she heard the victim's screams - a 20 year old girl coming back from a night out - at 7 a.m this morning. Police have ticker-taped the area.
As we are being pedantic:
1. The fact that people are describing something that happened outside their house doesn't mean that it wasn't in the passage. It seems to me that when most people talk about 'outside my house' they are referring to the area that they can see from their front windows not the area immediately adjacent to the front garden wall. For myself : I live adjacent to the passage, therefore something could happen both outside my house and in the passage.
2. I walk down the passage, most mornings, at about 7.15. I've never seen a policeman at this time. I rarely see anybody at all (and this morning there were fewer than usual). Personally I'm not bothered. This may be because I am extremely foolish; it may be because I always carry an attack alarm.
3. We don't know the 'facts' until we have the final court report. Reporting and commenting upon crime does not necessarily constitute scaremongering. We 'know' that the Sapphire unit is involved and frankly I think that that is enough information to assume that I need to be a little more vigilant. In the passage and walking down the road.
Whether this happened on the street or in the passage is irrelevant, it's in our neighbourhood and could happen anywhere within it.
In the interest of balance, I have seen the police and loads of times walking up and down the passage and on the Ladder roads at dusk and in the morning - not that I frequent the passage at 5-7am often.
I'm really sorry. I'm not trying to cause offense.
I feel very sorry for the passage sometimes. It gets a bad rap. Nobody defends it and I just know that anything said now will be remembered later even though it might be wrong (remember what the Met initially said about Jean Charles de Menezes?). I'd like to just leave the passage/location stuff out of it altogether.
I personally think everyone, especially women need to be EXTRA vigilant where ever they are walking and maybe avoiding dark and badly lit places / passages would be a good idea given the current turn of awful events.
Permalink Reply by IB on December 17, 2009 at 11:10
Reading this I am very pleased to see what a strong community there is. Great ideas/offers to help. Turning the situation around to avoid people feeling victimised is very important.
I was asleep and thought that I had heard screaming but being a heavy sleeper I didn't properly wake up, and when I did just had a weird feeling that it was a dream.
Obviously the police have certain protocols to follow re. their investigations, and I think that generally they have a good presence in our neighbourhood but I just feel that the wider community needs to be made aware of this, police notifications on lamposts or something at least. They don't need to be specific enough as to incite fear or anything, just a heads-up is all.
Had I known about the attack two weeks ago I think I would have definitely woken up at the thought of hearing screaming, and the police may have had another account/description of events following.
I think Scott makes a really important point - that if people know about this they will be more aware of what is going on around them, and more likely to do something if they hear anything unusual.
Like everyone here I've found this so shocking - so very sad for the two women involved, and so depressing for those of us who live in the area. I do think there should be more information about it out there - if you aren't on this site and/or are not linked in to GRA/LSCP then it would be quite easy to know nothing about what is going on. That's clearly wrong because I suspect that some of the most vulnerable are probably the least likely to be aware of what has happened. Wouldn't this also possibly help the police with their enquiries too - I'd imagine they are only talking to people in the immediate vicinity, whereas there might be people living further away who might have useful information.
It is with some regret that I add this link about a further incident in Downhills Park. We really need some widely distributed, accurate information from the SNT about what these men look like.
This is shocking news. I hope the girl is as well as possible. I also heard that statistically many rapes happen between the hours of 6 - 8 am and it's worth people knowing that.