The teen knife crime epidemic terrifying Victoria
Melbourne’s suburban shopping centres and train stations are becoming knife crime “hotspots”, involving teens as young as 13, with 30 blade crimes in one year at just three locations.
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Armed criminals, many of them teenagers, have turned suburban shopping centres and train stations into knife crime hotspots, with criminals as young as 13 taking part in violent stand-overs, stabbings and robberies.
Internal police intelligence reports, obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun under Freedom of Information laws, reveal a snapshot of the knife crime epidemic Victoria Police has been fighting for years, often with little political support.
In one year, at three suburban hotspots – Westfield Fountain Gate, Footscray Station and Box Hill Central – more than 30 people were stabbed, threatened, or robbed at knifepoint, many of them by groups of armed teens.
The family of one stabbing victim this week railed against the ease with which armed teen offenders are bailed and questioned the type of person who would commit such “evil” acts.
Assistant commissioners signed off on requests to conduct stop-and-search operations at Fountain Gate and Footscray, amid fears there was “a likelihood that violence or disorder will recur”.
The intelligence reports reveal young offenders were responsible for almost half the knife crime at the three hotspots.
In the lead-up to the searches, officers caught offenders with machetes, kitchen knives, flick knives, box cutters, knuckle dusters, a crossbow and ammunition.
The documents show police were especially worried about young offenders, who were “highly likely to be involved in robberies where victims are targeted for their personal property” by offenders who “target victims of their (own) age group or younger”.
In one incident, a 17-year-old boy suffered memory loss after more than a dozen young boys, wearing balaclavas and waving machetes, bashed him and a friend near the Fountain Gate bus interchange.
In another incident, five young men beat a 13-year-old boy by smashing a glass bottle over his head.
In a third incident, a pack of five teenagers stabbed a 20-year-old man in the back.
At Box Hill Central, an 18-year-old was sentenced to four years in youth detention over a series of robberies and armed robberies.
The internal police documents show a 19-year-old man held two men in their 20s at knifepoint during a four-hour ordeal in which he forced them to withdraw cash from ATMs.
The intelligence documents also reveal there were 15 separate knife attacks around Footscray Station in the year leading up to when a 12-year-old girl in state care stabbed a 37-year-old woman to death in a nearby apartment complex.
In one attack near the station, two 15-year-old girls and a 15-year-old boy waved a 20cm knife at a 14-year-old boy before punching him in the head and stealing his shoes.
Police said they were unable to process documents that would reveal the full scale of Melbourne’s knife crime problem, because doing so would be too time consuming.
Faiza Mahat, whose 25-year-old brother Khalid Mahat was stabbed to death by a group of suspected teenage gang members in Heidelberg West told the Sunday Herald Sun young criminals were not being held to account.
“They get released (bailed) because they’re young, but it doesn’t matter if you’re young,” Ms Mahat said.
“Everybody has been a teenager and we never would have committed this kind of evil stuff. It’s really hard. It’s an ongoing issue and there needs to be tougher laws. I hate to be in Melbourne because of this. It’s really sad.”
Mr Mahat was allegedly lured to a Heidelberg West home where his friend was being held against his will before the group of eight minors stabbed him more than 10 times in the neck and chest with long knives in October 2022. He went into cardiac arrest in the front yard and died at the scene.
Ms Mahat said the knife scourge forced her and her family to relive the horror of Khalid’s death whenever news broke of a stabbing.
“It’s traumatising, to be honest. I just remember everything that happened to my brother,” she said.
“Every time we see someone that’s lost their life in the way that my brother did, or who has been hurt, it breaks our hearts.
“I never want anyone else to go through that again.”
Mr Mahat’s death was one of a series of fatal knife attacks across Melbourne that prompted the state government to introduce tighter weapons laws earlier this year.
Jesuit Social Services chief executive Julie Edwards said it was crucial to reconnect disadvantaged youths, at risk of falling into a life of crime, with education and career opportunities before they became repeat offenders.
“There is a compelling argument that early intervention is our best crime prevention method,” she said.
The state government in February proposed minor amendments to weapons laws to make it clear that selling a machete to a child was a crime.
It also proposed amendments to make it easier for police to issue firearm prohibition orders.
But shadow police minister Brad Battin said the recent slashing of crime prevention funding in the state budget could have real-world consequences for knife attack victims.
“Prevention and targeted programs should start for the highest risk kids as young as eight or nine years old, and the first step of that is to make sure the funding remains to keep the programs in place,” he said.
A Victoria Police spokesman said officers seized thousands of knives a year.
Over the next year, $6.6m has been allocated in the budget for youth crime prevention.
Les Twentyman’s crusade against knife crime
No one was more passionate about stamping out violent knife crime than the late Les Twentyman.
The western suburbs youth worker worked tirelessly to steer those embedded in street violence to new and brighter beginnings, constantly shining a light on the dangers of knives and machetes.
He was always the first advocate our reporters would call in the event of a serious youth crime event.
Even this week, one of my colleagues started texting him to ask for his thoughts on an incident in his patch across the western suburbs.
And he was always giving us all a buzz, throwing in his two cents on the latest social and criminal issues.
As his brother, Garry, said at Mr Twentyman’s funeral last month, he “loved an audience”.
His loss is a profound one.
Police were called to a spate of machete attacks in shopping centres across the west in recent days and weeks. Les would have been all over it like a rash.
In September last year, he called for the immediate ban of machete sales in the wake of 16-year-old Pasawm Lyhym’s stabbing death near the Sunshine train station.
He branded the laws that allowed children to purchase the deadly weapons as “gutless”.
“No one should be able to do that, no matter their age,” Mr Twentyman said. “Machetes should only be available to buy for their intended purpose, cutting cane in Queensland.”
Two months later, discussions between the state government and police force were underway to ban the sales of the weapons. They now cannot be legally purchased by a minor in sweeping changes announced earlier this year.
That’s the sort of impact his voice and passion had.
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