11 YEAR OLD SHOT DEAD

23-08-2007

The grim news that an 11-year old boy was shot dead in a Liverpool car park last night will chill the heart of every parent this morning - and of every feeling human being. Rhys Jones was shot through the neck while playing football with two friends.

The Stirrer doesn't pretend to have any easy answers to the problem of gun violence, but to foster the debate, we've been trawling the web on your behalf listening to those rather closer to the latest story than we are.

David Jones, MP for Clwyd West in North Wales - just up the road from Merseyside - lays into Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, denouncing her as "just another talking head" after an appearance on BBC Breakfast News this morning.

He says: "When a sub-teenage boy is shot in the streets of one of our great cities in broad daylight by another boy of similar age, something pretty dreadful is wrong.

"We are now experiencing the latest phase in the process of the disintegration of social cohesion that has been going on in this country, under governments of both stripes, since at least the last war.

"We have to recognise the process first, and then do something about it. Government can facilitate the healing process (which will in any event take many years) but all of us must play our own part." (More here)

PC Bloggs, who describes himself as a "twenty first century police officer" says he doesn't normally comment on murder cases as he tried to keep his site light-hearted, but makes an exception in this case.

Amid the inevitable clamour for more police powers, he points out that the incident happened in a designated dispersal area, where police can already split up groups of young people behaving anti-socially.

The copper's verdict: "I must put out a rallying cry to anyone out there currently without a bandwagon. The situation cannot be allowed to continue, when there is a glaringly obvious solution that this government refuses to acknowledge: we need new legislation, abolishing murder and outlawing firearms." (More here)

Paul Iddon's Photography site has a picture of the murdered youngster and quotes an eyewitness who claims to have seen a 14 or 15 year old hoodie wearing youngster walk up and kill Rhys outside the Fir Tree pub (see link here)

A 14 year old boys and and 18 year old man have been arrested in connection with the killing.

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