There’s blood spattered on the pavement but locals in New Addington, an estate in Croydon, southeast London, seem curiously unbothered. ‘I’ve had no problems,’ Eli, who lives around the corner from the latest stabbing, tells me.
Eli’s house is close to Rowdown Field, where last March a human head and other dismembered body parts were found. Sarah Mayhew, a 38-year-old mother of two, was murdered and her remains dumped here. Flowers and solar-powered candles are pinned to the side of a metal cargo container in the car park visited by her killer. Leftover police tape flutters in the wind. The roar of traffic from the main road shatters the silence.
Diana, who lives nearby, is afraid. ‘It makes me feel worried,’ she says. ‘You had the murder down there and now this stabbing. What can you do? I’d like to move but I can’t. I’m stuck here. You just have to get on with it and do your best, but it’s not great’.
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