The youth centre battling back after the shock of a tragic stabbing

A year after the murder of Glendon Spence, a community is facing up to the surge in youth violence

On 21 February 2019, two young men ran into the Marcus Lipton youth centre in south London on a busy Thursday and stabbed 23-year-old Glendon Spence to death. The tragedy sent shockwaves across my community in Loughborough Junction.

Faced with intergenerational cycles of neglect and disadvantage, young people have for decades considered the youth centre as a second home. Glendon's murder was a sharp reminder that, in modern Britain, street violence can pierce even the most resilient of spaces; another loved soul frozen in time.