[Previous entry: "Another Iraq War Legacy: Badly Wounded U.S. Troops"] [Next entry: "Israel still in control of Gaza, says envoy"]

10/25/2005:

"Police hunt 11 youths over killing"

The man who was stabbed to death during weekend rioting in Birmingham was set upon by up to 11 armed youths as he walked home from the cinema with his brother, it emerged yesterday.
Isiah Young-Sam, 24, had not been involved in any of the confrontations between the Pakistani and African-Caribbean communities that erupted on Saturday evening, officers from the West Midlands police said.

The victim was, they said, innocently walking home with his younger brother, Zephaniah, and two friends, when three cars pulled up alongside them and launched into a furious attack. Detective Superintendent Dave Mirfield said: "The group was approached by three cars. Those cars contained, we believe, between 10 and 11 men. These men got out of the cars, armed with knives, and attacked Isiah and his friends."

Yesterday it emerged that Mr Young-Sam, described as a gentle and deeply religious man who read the Bible each day, was oblivious to the febrile atmosphere that had developed in the Lozells area of Birmingham on Saturday. He and his brother had spent the late afternoon and early evening in the cinema. Afterwards they caught a bus from the city centre and were just a few hundred metres from home when they were set upon. Mr Young-Sam, an IT analyst at Birmingham city council, was taken to hospital but was dead on arrival. Yesterday, as riot police returned to the troubled streets of Lozells, his family paid tribute to a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tensions were also raised further by a second murder, the shooting of a man in Newtown, less than a mile away from the scene of Saturday's disturbance.
guardian.co.uk