Caught in the crossfire: Mafia speculation swirls around north London shooting
Caught in the crossfire: Mafia speculation swirls around north London shooting
As the police investigation gets underway, insiders and locals suspect an old feud has resurfaced in Dalston
Morning — as of writing late on Saturday, a nine-year-old girl remains in critical condition after being caught in the crossfire of a motorbike drive-by shooting in northeast London. She and three adult men were shot outside a restaurant in Dalston on Wednesday evening. The police investigation has moved fast, with officers recovering the motorbike and issuing a plea for information from local Turkish and Kurdish communities. But in the absence of concrete answers, theories from police insiders and locals are also cropping up. What officials and anonymous sources are saying about the Dalston shooting is after your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: an arts eviction battle, more London election bits, and the time squatters took over a lido.
👀 In case you missed it: we published our guide to the general election in London on Thursday, featuring: Labour’s strategy for the capital revealed, a Tory big beast’s last stand, unfriendly fire up north, and what pollsters are predicting. Most of our guide is free to all our readers, because elections are just too important — but if you want to get full access and support our London reporting, you can become a paid Spy subscriber using the button below.
What we’ve spied
🗞️ So long and thanks for all the crosswords — the Evening Standard has announced it’s scrapping its daily print paper, as years of financial losses finally take their toll. The news came on Wednesday, when it was revealed the Standard’s directors had told staff that the London paper would be moving to a new weekly format, bringing to an end its 200 years of printing a weekday paper. Chairman Paul Kanareck explained to employees in writing: “Shorter commuting weeks, widespread Wi-Fi along our commuting routes and the desire for our readers to consume ever-richer content across a variety of platforms and devices, all make evolution a prerequisite of viability”. Viability has been in short supply at the Standard — last year the paper published its sixth consecutive annual loss, while its circulation has shrunk from around 800,000 to under 300,000.
The reaction from Londoners has been a mix of shock, glee and apathy. Ex-editor Simon Jenkins was among those publishing an obituary — “Nothing better illustrates the fate of London’s press than the sight of a Tube carriage crammed with mobile phones, and hardly a Standard in sight,” he writes. Others were quick to suggest the Standard had grown out of touch with many Londoners anyway, particularly under the editorship of Tory George Osborne and the ownership of Lord Lebedev, a Boris Johnson ally. “This is sad news – the demise of South Kensington’s only daily newspaper,” sums that view up. And for others still, the Standard’s absence will be felt more mundanely: “That's a pain, it was great for stuffing wet trainers with to help them dry.”
It’s taken every ounce of the Spy’s strength not to say we told you so (though, to be fair, we did). But in all seriousness, concern now turns to the Standard’s 140 journalists and their jobs. Directors said on Wednesday that “any impact on staffing” from the shake-up will be subject to a consultation process. If any of you are reading this, and you already want out, our guide to writing about London for us is here.
🗳️ LONDON VOTES 🗳️ Thanks to all the readers who sent in kind words about our London general election guide on Thursday. Here are four more things to know from this week:
Sir Keir Starmer has said Diane Abbott “is free to go forward as a Labour candidate” in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, ending days of uncertainty about whether she was being blocked from standing. It appears Abbott is still willing to stand for Labour and isn’t considering an independent run, after her name re-appeared on the party’s website for the seat.
Labour’s office in Chingford & Wood Green was defaced with anti-Israel graffiti overnight on Friday, amid fallout from the deselection of local candidate Faiza Shaheen. The graffiti read: “Israel lobby out… don’t work for us… UK MPs for UK not Israel”. The Met Police is now investigating. Meanwhile, Shaheen has said she’s mounting a legal challenge against Labour, having been blocked from standing over her past social media activity.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak has now made two trips to London while on the campaign trail — this week to a cafe in Harrow East, and before that Wimbledon. Both are marginal seats the Tories are defending this election. Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer arrived in Uxbridge & South Ruislip alongside deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner to launch the party’s battle bus. It’s Starmer’s second London visit of the election, having met with Jewish voters in Chipping Barnet on Monday.
Sadiq Khan’s plans to take control of London’s suburban rail lines have been snubbed by Labour officials. The mayor campaigned for his third term on the promise of a “rail revolution in London”, bringing Southeastern and Great Northern commuter lines under TfL control. But Louise Haigh, shadow transport secretary, this week said they’d instead fall under a Labour government’s renationalisation plans, and be part of a new public company, Great British Railways.
🎭 “All we can do is wait and see,” a north London theatre group tells the Spy, as their eviction battle with an arts centre comes to a head. Black Arts Production Theatre (BAP) is currently campaigning to keep its studio space in Bernie Grant Arts Centre (BGAC) in Tottenham, after the centre hiked the group’s rent by 42%, from £420 to £600 a month. The group was established in 1992 in response to a lack of opportunities for black and ethnic minorities in TV and theatre, and co-founder Andrew Reid says its work is crucial for “diverting people away from crime and creating artists”. But now, having been given just one month’s notice about the rent hike, and unable to find the extra £180 a month in time, BAP has no choice but to leave. The group has set up a petition and organised a public meeting next week in Tottenham — representatives of BGAC turned down an invite.
BGAC has responded publicly by saying it’s kept BAP’s rent the same for seven years, and that the new rent is still below the market average. The deadline for a deal is Friday, June 7, when eviction is technically due. Lawyer Pauline Campbell, who worked on the Justice4Windrush campaign and is now helping BAP, tells the Spy that BPAC can remove the group without a court order, because they have a commercial licence. “They will have the right to evict via what is known as peaceful re-entry where they can attend BAP's office within the centre early in the morning and remove BAP's belongings and change the locks,” says Campbell. “But they have not confirmed if this process will actually take place on 7 June as this is something that l guess will require some planning. All we can do is wait and see.”
🏚️ The number of no-fault evictions in London has increased 52% in the past year, new City Hall figures reveal — a rise five times higher than in the rest of England and Wales. The stats show that in the year to March 2024 there were 11,880 no-fault evictions — when a landlord kicks out tenants without a reason — which was significantly up on the 7,834 seen in the capital in 2023. The Conservatives had promised to ban the practice, but the relevant bill didn’t make it through Parliament in time for the general election being called. Reacting to the stats, Labour mayor Sadiq Khan called the failure to ban no-faults a “huge betrayal of London’s 2.7 million private renters, who are left with the threat of eviction hanging over their heads”.
🎊 A London festival was nearly cancelled this week over concerns its park grounds are already too battered from the summer event season. It was only on Friday, at the eleventh hour, that Lambeth council finally gave the go-ahead to Mighty Hoopla, a two-day pop festival taking place in Brockwell Park this weekend, after an event the week before turned the park into a sea of mud amid heavy rain. Pics of the churned-up ground at the south London park prompted concern, and the council ended up calling off a prior children’s event on Wednesday. Just enough dry weather plus extra efforts to protect the ground ahead of Mighty Hoopla — like these wood chips — satisfied the council in the end though. It comes amid wider concerns that London boroughs are pushing parks to breaking point to plug their budget holes. An infamous case last year, when Haringey council completely banned festival after a mud backlash. At least we got some excellent Mighty Hoopla memes this week though. More trouble for Lambeth: the Times ran a feature piece this week asking if it’s “Britain’s worst council”, due to its debts and poor conditions for social housing tenants.
🌊 Thames Water hasn’t quite put water infection scares to bed in south London, amid calls for further tests from sick families. Last week the Observer reported that several families in Beckenham had reported becoming unwell with diarrhoea and vomiting, resulting in Thames Water sending off samples of water to a laboratory for testing, then finding no issues. But, with it now revealed Thames Water had only tested the water at one property despite multiple households claiming they got sick, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, has come out swinging. He’s called on the company to “get a grip” and test wider treatment works “urgently”. The Guardian has continued to put pressure on Thames Water, and the company has now agreed to test the water of Syreeta Brown, a Beckenham resident whose eight-year-old son was severely unwell for 12 days and was briefly hospitalised. It follows an infected water scandal in Devon last month, when more than 100 cases of a parasite called cryptosporidium were found in the water supply.
👮 Damning words from the father of Stephen Lawrence, who says he’s forgiven his son’s killers but not the Met Police. Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen, who was murdered in a racist attack in southeast London in 1993, published a first-person piece on Monday, outlining how he still feels the impact of his son’s murder — and the bungled police investigation — 30 years on. He writes:
I have “let go” of my anger towards Stephen’s killers and found forgiveness, because anger and bitterness are corrosive. I can find no such forgiveness towards the Met. This is not simply because of how they treated my family in the aftermath of Stephen’s murder, or even their failure to secure convictions. It is because, year after year, the racism embedded within the Met has been exposed – most recently by Louise Casey’s report last year into its standards of behaviour and internal culture. For 30 years I have been caught up in a swirl of miscommunication, untruths, inaction and indifference – 30 years of broken promises, apologies and false hope.
Only two people were ever found guilty of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, but it’s believed others who participated in the attack walked free. There’s currently an ongoing review of new evidence brought to light by the BBC last year over a potential sixth suspect in the case.
🏗️ PLANNING CORNER 🏗️ Down in southwest London, a public inquiry into plans for a mammoth development of more than 1,000 homes has begun. Developer Reselton is spending £1.5bn on the redevelopment project at Mortlake, based at the former Stag Brewery site. The scheme has been given initial support by the local borough council, Richmond, but the Greater London Authority and campaigners are concerned there aren’t enough affordable homes planned (7.5% of the total). So the Planning Inspectorate is now taking a look, beginning its hearing this week. Elsewhere: ‘If you build it, will they come?,’ asks Joshua Oliver for the Financial Times, in his in-depth look at the £8b regeneration of Brent Cross in west London.
💼 WFH is waning in London, according to one of the capital’s major office landlords. Almost a fifth (18%) more workers in the capital turned up to their central London offices over the past year, says LandSec, which owns £4.3bn worth of offices mostly around Victoria and the City and has been tracking people going through its turnstiles. It’s a small sign London offices might be bouncing back, after being hammered by changes in working patterns since Covid — LandSec has sold off £2bn in its portfolio since 2020. In another London WFH news: TfL’s trial of off-peak Tube fares on Fridays, meant to attract T.W.A.T.s to the office, ended this week. Results of the trial will now be analysed to figure out what’s being made permanent.
👠 A particularly spicy graduation ceremony on Wednesday for London’s upcoming fashionistas. As third-year students presented their final collections on the runway at the BA fashion show at Central Saint Martins, a huge pro-Palestine banner was unfurled from the balcony by a group of students from a neighbouring London university. The University of Arts London students were also outside the show with placards and chanting. They were specifically calling for a boycott of L’Oreal, which sponsors CSM’s BA show and appears on the BDS boycott list.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
A visit to the rewilded spot in north London that Spurs are taking over
On whether booking culture has ruined London’s restaurant scene
Fears of “retribution” over Dalston shooting
Around ten forensic officers, wearing light blue protective suits and checkered police caps, are clearing away tables on the pavement outside Evin restaurant. They’re dismantling a frozen scene of strewn chairs, plates and glasses, carrying them inside for the final task of evidence exhibiting. The section of Kingsland Road behind them, normally a busy stretch of Dalston’s main drag this time of day, is empty, closed off with police tape and cars. Groups of passersby are stopping to watch, a few talking to the black-clad officers guarding either side of the cordon.
Friday evening was the last day of the crime scene investigation into the drive-by shooting that took place in Dalston this week. In its public statements so far, the Met Police has only given a vague indication of its understanding of the case, saying it believes that the attack “had an element of pre-planning”, and that detectives are specifically reaching out to Turkish and Kurdish communities in north and east London for information. But unofficially, a mix of anonymous police and local sources have been floating a more specific theory — that a long-standing gang dispute has violently resurfaced in this part of north London.
As for the attack itself — CCTV shows that at around 9.20pm on Wednesday, a person on a motorbike pulled up outside the restaurant, fired at least four shots, then fled. Four people were hit, three of which remain in hospital as we write on Saturday — including a nine-year-old girl, currently in “critical condition”. Relatives have said the girl is from Birmingham and was in London visiting family during the school holidays. She had been eating at Evin with her mother and father when she was struck with a bullet. The family had said on Friday that the girl has undergone one operation to save her life, and that another might be needed.
The other victims are three adult men, not known to the girl. One, a 37-year-old man, has been discharged from hospital. The two others — a 42-year-old and a 44-year-old — remain in stable conditions, though with one facing life-changing injuries.
All that’s been said officially by the Met about the men is that they are connected with local Turkish and Kurdish communities, resulting in the force’s direct plea for information. A few hours before forensics were wrapping up on Friday, detective chief superintendent James Conway, the local policing lead in Hackney, gave a televised update on the case. To his right-hand side was Erim Metto, CEO of the Turkish Cypriot Association, a charity for the community with branches all over London, including Hackney. Metto echoed the Met’s call for information, saying in full:
As a community we are shocked by the incident that occurred at a restaurant in Hackney which has led to four people being shot, including a young child.
We urge anyone from the Turkish and Kurdish communities that may have any information to come forward and speak to police.
If you do not feel comfortable to speak with police directly, you may do so through your community leaders, your faith leaders, Turkish Police Association or anonymously through Crimestoppers.
We as a community stand against violence and gun crime.
Conway also announced the first big breakthrough in the case: that police had recovered the motorbike used in the shooting, finding it discarded nearby on Colvestone Crescent. It’s a Ducati Monster, with a white body, red chassis and red wheels, and previously stolen from a property in Wembley in 2021. It was displaying the registration plates DP21OXY at the time of the shooting — but detectives have stressed to anyone who may recognise the bike that it could have previously had different plates.
That’s as far as the Met has divulged publicly. But anonymous sources in the force have gone further, in conversation with Guardian crime correspondent Vikram Dodd. He reports that, while police are keeping an “open mind” as to the motive, the force is exploring whether the attack was either linked to a feud between gangs, or within a single group. Still being established is whether the male victims were the intended target of the shooting. Dodd is also told of concerns about potential escalation. One anonymous source says: “The police are concerned about retribution”. Another says: “The fear is this won’t go unanswered.”
Going even further is a separate report, based on a conversation with a local Turkish cafe owner in Dalston, from the Daily Mail, who claims to have spoken to the male victims in the shooting. Their claims are uncorroborated by any other mainstream media outlet, but they allege the men are “tough men, gangsters”, well-known among the Turkish community in Hackney. Specifically, that they are members of the Hackney ‘Bombacilar’ — Turkish for ‘bombers’ — and that they were targeting by another group, the Tottenham Boys.
If true, the Dalston shooting would represent a reawakening of a longstanding conflict between the two groups, which are known for their involvement in the heroin trade and loan sharking. This conflict boiled over violently in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the groups descended into a deadly tit-for-tat exchange, with public executions outside shops, cafes and Tube stations in north London. The groups have regularly been referred to as “Turkish mafia syndicates”, with violence exchanged both within London and abroad in Turkey. Indeed, in 2009, Tottenham MP David Lammy feared their feud had become a “mafia-style” conflict. So far the Met has not confirmed the groups’ involvement in the shooting, and the Daily Mail stands alone in this report.
Outside of the investigation, the Dalston shooting has been met with horror and shock. Local MP Diane Abbott, while amid her internal party troubles this week, described the attack as “appalling”, adding: “The police must be given full co-operation in finding the perpetrators”. In the girl’s home village, a special church service was held on Saturday morning. Evin, the restaurant at the scene of the shooting, has also been receiving support, in the form of an influx of five-star reviews online. “Sending my love and support after the terrible incident. The community love and support you,” writes one reviewer. “Many thanks for your message and good wishes, see you soon,” replies the owner.
In its most recent statement, which has also been translated into Turkish, the Met writes to those with information: “You can call 101 or our dedicated incident room on 020 8345 3865 or pass information on anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or online via crimestoppers-uk.org.”