The latest stabbing in Oxford city centre has left members of the public asking “what's happened to our city?”

St Aldates has been taped off by police for at least eight hours after a stabbing took place in Pembroke Street near the junction with St Aldates at around 4am this morning (Sunday, August 27).

Although partially closed, the centre of Oxford was bustling all day with people gathering around the cordoned off road, while walkers, cyclists and motorists were diverted by police officers on the approach to St Aldates.

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Fernando Paiva, the owner of Fernando’s Cafe, said: “It’s sad this is happening in Oxford. I just wonder why it’s happening.

“I can’t help but think ‘what happened to Oxford?’, I’ve lived here for 22 years and it used to be very safe.”

A barista from Paul, a cafe on the high street, commented on how this incident will affect the social life and vibrancy of Oxford.

Daniel Rose said: “This is the second stabbing I’ve seen in Oxford this year.

“It’s something that reflects the wider issue in Britain as a whole, where knife crime in certain parts of the country really is bad.

“But it’s spreading to other parts of the country. Even Oxford, which is known to be very safe, is being affected by it.

“This is going to do nothing but affect the vibrancy of the city. If you have a city where people are afraid to go out at night and express themselves, we don’t have a nice city to live in.

“If we’re going to have a social scene in Oxford, we can’t have crime like this.”

Josh Green, an assistant manager at Black Sheep Coffee on the high street, said: “You just don’t think this could happen in Oxford.

“It seems like such a safe city, but the fact the incident took place in the early hours of the morning is not surprising, people get very rowdy at that time.”

Retired news agent Tim Gresswell, who was delivering newspapers in the morning, said: “I saw it this morning at around 5am, and it was closed off then, one officer told me it could be closed for quite a while.

“These instances happen so often in Oxford now, it’s because there’s no police presence. The police should be pre-empting these things, they should be present.

A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said: “We have a number of officers, both in uniformed and plain-clothed roles, policing the night time economy across the Thames Valley, including in Oxford.

“We also work with door staff and venue management and city pastors to run Nightsafe to keep the public safe in the night-time economy.

“Thankfully, incidents such as we saw overnight are extremely rare, and when they occur, we will investigate thoroughly to bring offenders to justice.

“Our night-time economy activity also includes Project Vigilant, which sees a combination of uniformed and non-uniformed officers carry out patrols to identify people who may display signs of predatory behaviour, such as sexual harassment, inappropriate touching and loitering.”

 

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This story was written by Matthew Norman, he joined the team in 2022 as a Facebook community reporter.

Matthew covers Bicester and focuses on finding stories from diverse communities.

Get in touch with him by emailing: Matthew.norman@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @OxMailMattN1