A 17-year-old girl has become the latest murder victim in London after she was stabbed near a children’s playground in a park in an apparent random attack.
Steve Bird
March 2 2019 8:16 PM
A 17-year-old girl has become the latest murder victim in London after she was stabbed near a children’s playground in a park in an apparent random attack.
The student, named locally as Jodie Chesney, was said to have been “just sitting” with friends in the park in Harold Hill, Romford, on Friday when she was approached by two men.
It is understood one of the men was seen to stab her in the back before the pair fled.
Neighbours and parents of those she was with rushed to her aid.
Teresa Farenden, a 49-year-old mother of three whose home backs onto Harold Wood where the girl was attacked, went to help the teenager after hearing screaming coming from the park shortly after 9pm.
Explaining how she had heard voices yelling for help, she said: “I never thought in a million years that I would be walking out to a young lady who had been stabbed.
“Then a boy said, ‘I need help, my girlfriend has been stabbed’ and I just flew over there.
“People are scared to help, but all I was thinking with my mother’s instinct was, ‘I need to help’. Her boyfriend did everything he could.”
She placed the girl in the recovery position and administered chest compression in the hope of reviving her.
“The knife’s blade was still in her, but I didn’t see it because it was dark,” she continued.
“I didn’t realise at the time, but then all I kept thinking, once the police told me, was, ‘Have I put the knife in further by giving her compressions?’
“It was horrific, it was just the blood. There was so much of it. The girl was moaning, but she was mostly silent. We checked her pulse and we could hear her breathing.”
An ambulance crew arrived, but Ms Farenden believed the girl was already dead by then.
