'You go numb': Knife crime victims in Birmingham share their harrowing experiences

ITV Central Reporter Ravneet Nandra spent an evening with a community in Bordesley Green in Birmingham, where they say knife crime is rife, with some fearing to walk there at night.

People in Bordesley Green in Birmingham say they fear to walk the streets at night in case they're approached, beaten or stabbed.

They say they frequently hear reports of stabbings in the area.

Maani Qassam has lived in Birmingham his whole life.

One day on his lunch break from work near Bullring Market, he was stabbed three times, unprovoked.

He said: "Randomly this guy comes and starts stabbing me. I don't know how to put it any other way. There was no build up before the thing. I didn't see the guy.

"The guy had seen me, done it and ran away. In broad daylight.

"It feels like you're getting tapped on the shoulder, and then after you feel the wetness of the blood and two, three minutes later, you feel the part where you got stabbed going numb.

Another man, who wanted to remain anonymous, described the night he was ambushed and beaten on the street one night.

He said he was once part of the wrong crowd. The gang had knives but he wasn't stabbed. He said: "As I'm walking, I look around and I see about, six people coming this way, six people coming that way.

"I got to around here and I thought 'maybe, I should run' but, at the time and place and I didn't know what to do.

"It all happened so quick and they all come at me and I just stood here and accepted it, and then.

"I was put to the wall, and I was getting punches, kicks, hitting me with bats, everything.

In the year ending March 2024, out of the four West Midlands police forces, there were 22 murders involving a knife, according to the Office for National Statistics.

That figures consists of 16 in the West Midlands, four in Staffordshire, two in West Mercia and zero in Warwickshire.

Looking at West Midlands Police in detail from a Freedom of Information request, between November 2020 and October 2023, 11,286 knife crime incidents were recorded. More than half of those were recorded in Birmingham alone (6,185.)

And just last year, there were 89 incidents involving a zombie knife and 542 involving a machete, having increased each year before that since 2020. The kitchen knife was used 867 times.

To help tackle this rise in knife crime and youth violence, West Midlands Police has started a specialist taskforce.

Project Guardian has made more than 500 arrests since the start of the year and seized more than 350 weapons while on patrols.

Zombie-style knife and machete ban

From Tuesday 24 September 2024, it will be illegal to own zombie-style knives and machetes as they will be added to the list of dangerous prohibited items already banned, including zombie knives, butterfly knives, Samurai swords and push daggers.

Ahead of the new ban coming into force, people were urged to hand them over at police stations across England and Wales or to dispose of these weapons using surrender bins.

Mohammed Zafran is an active campaigner against knife crime, ever since his brother-in-law was stabbed to death in 2010.He set up a youth initiative at a snooker hall in Bordesley Green after residents in the area reached out to him about their fears.

Anyone can attend the sessions in the evening, for a game or a conversation.

He said: "There's youngsters out there, going around stabbing each other. We've got postcode wars which are getting worse and worse.

"Every second road here, apparently there's been a stabbing and someone has reported it.

"There is fear, but some of them are actually honest and are saying 'look, we've made mistakes, we've been involved in gangs, we've been involved in knife crime.'

"But they want to get away from it all and come to us for help.

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