Anti-knife fight goes to New York

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/london/7584101.stm

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The sister of a 16-year-old boy stabbed to death plans to travel to New York as part of her campaign to tackle knife crime.

Ben Kinsella was stabbed on 29 June, during a night out in Islington, north London.

Speaking to the BBC, former EastEnders actress Brooke Kinsella said she wanted to see how the city reduced crime levels with its zero tolerance policy.

Ms Kinsella stressed there was no "quick fix" to the problem.

Since January, 24 teenagers have died in violent circumstances in London.

Learn lessons

Ms Kinsella said she had met with politicians, police, families of victims and schools since her brother's death, in an attempt to find solutions to knife crime.

"New York had a massive crime level but they have managed to reduce it with their zero tolerance policy, so I want to go out there and speak to people who started this policy.

"I think if we can take some lessons from them and learn how they did it maybe we could help our country in the same way."

Ms Kinsella said her family was still trying to cope with Ben's death.Ben Kinsella was fatally stabbed during a night out with friends

"It's still a bit surreal, I think we are on a kind of autopilot... it's just survival instinct at the moment.

"We've lost seven more kids, after Ben and, you know, we're just, we're not naive enough to think that we can't stop anybody else dying, but we want to try and, we don't want any other family to go through this.

"The people of our country want to make a difference now and, there's enough of us that are ready to stand up and make a change.

"We can't just fix this with a quick fix - four years in prison. You need to start trying to prevent it from an early age."

Juries Kika and Michael Allende, both 18, and Jade Braithwaite, 19, have been charged with Ben's murder.