Croydon: Community in shock after Elianne Andam death

In the centre of the flowers laid by the bus stop where 15-year-old Elianne Andam was fatally stabbed, is a teddy bear with a note that reads "Save our children".

The killing of a teenage girl on her way to school has shocked the community along with the unusual circumstances of her death.

Most teenage victims of knife crime are male. Most attacks happen in the hours after school ends.

Elianne was stabbed to death on the morning of 27 September. A 17-year-old boy has appeared in court charged with her murder.

In Croydon, community leaders have long been calling for more to be done to protect children, and for young people themselves, fear of knife crime is nothing new.

Tilisha Goupall, from the My Ends community group, said: "It's triggering, and a lot of young people I know are impacted by what's happened.

"It's going to take a lot for this community to heal from this tragedy."

Just a few minutes walk from the Whitgift Centre, and the bus stop where Elianne was attacked, is London Road, an area that has long been notorious for drug dealing and violence.

It is where 14-year-old Jermaine Cools was stabbed to death two years ago.

His killer, Marques Walke, was 16 at the time and had a history of carrying deadly weapons.

Just weeks before he attacked Jermaine he had been on bail for having a Zombie knife.

Lorraine Dudek, Jermaine's mother, told the BBC the failure to deal with Walke's habit of carrying knives had been "a missed opportunity".

Jermaine was one of five teenagers killed in Croydon in 2021, the highest number in any London borough.

Across London that year, 30 teenagers were victims of homicide - the highest on record.

Local groups, with funding from the Mayor's Violence Reduction Unit, have been working together to try to provide better opportunities for young people, in an area with high deprivation, and to build better relationships with the police.

This remains a huge challenge, particularly among many young black Londoners who do not trust the Met - a force that has promised to reform after being found institutionally racist, with black Londoners over-policed and under-protected.

Three years ago, the Croydon Voluntary Action group offered space at its hub on London Road to local officers, where they now hold weekly meetings with the community to listen to concerns.

Police said it has helped them understand local needs and tackle crime, because it has encouraged people to share information with them where they would not have previously engaged.

They said this is helping break down what they were refer to as a "wall of silence".

As 2022 drew to a close, with the rate of teenage homicide halved across London, and no young lives lost in the borough of Croydon, there was relief from many in the community, but no one was complacent.

Croydon's Safer Neighbourhood Chair, Donna Murray Turner, said at the time: "The fact there's been no more deaths is more about luck and the grace of God, than it is about strategic thinking."

She warned that despite the great work, much more needed to be done to involve the wider community, and said she was worried about the impact of the cost of living crisis.

"It is going to get rough," she said.

"We're already living in a town where there have been serious cuts. But what are we doing, despite those cuts, to help those young people?"

Her concerns were echoed last week, by James Watkins, who runs Mainzworld, a mentoring and development group for young people.

"The reality is, when the borough is in so much debt, when a lot of funding is cut for organisations that are helping to reduce serious youth violence, you're fighting a losing battle, to be fair, and that's how we feel sometimes," he told BBC London.

In the last year, knife crime with injury has risen by 24% in the borough.

Teenage homicide is again creeping up.

Elianne Andam is the 15th teenager in the capital to be killed this year.

But campaigners are wary when discussing numbers of victims. Every life lost is one too many, and each one is mourned by their family, friends and community.

At a memorial ceremony on Sunday, the Bishop of Croydon, Doctor Rosemarie Mallett, asked for Elianne not be remembered as a statistic. Her family described her as "a beautiful person inside and out who loved Jesus. She was intelligent, thoughtful, kind and had a bright future ahead."

Community leaders are planning more meetings, more action, and many are calling for far more focus on male violence against women, but they say they need support and long term funding to prevent other young lives being lost.

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