Detective Superintendent Nikki Leach from South Yorkshire Police speaks to the media after man stabbed to death in Westfield.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Officers were called to the parkland behind me shortly before 11 o'clock last night
00:03 to report a man with significant injuries.
00:06 On arrival, they found a man with suspected stab wounds
00:08 who unfortunately died at the scene.
00:11 Today, I'm appealing for witnesses in relation to this incident.
00:15 Have you seen anything? Do you know anything that you can report to us?
00:19 Please do so.
00:20 But also, I want to give some reassurance to the communities around here
00:23 that we're working really hard to piece together what's happened,
00:25 to find out what's happened here,
00:27 and there are lots of officers on the scene. If anybody's got any concerns or any questions,
00:31 they can approach and hopefully we'll be able to support you.
00:34 When I came here early this morning, I could see the tent on the other side of the road.
00:39 Obviously, the whole park has been closed off.
00:41 What do you know about what happened?
00:44 The information that I've already given you is as much as I know at this time.
00:48 We're working really hard. We're in the earliest stages of our investigation.
00:51 We're working really hard to find out what's happened and piece that together.
00:54 And again, all of that support from the community that we can get in relation to any information,
00:59 intelligence, or witnesses that might have witnessed something will be really helpful to us in that.
01:04 We've seen a lot of officers, even today, behind us doing door-to-door.
01:07 There's a big estate here. You're obviously speaking to a lot of people, aren't you?
01:10 Yes, we are, yeah.
01:12 Tell me a little bit about that. You obviously need people's help, don't you?
01:14 So tell me about the amount of officers that you've got working on this.
01:17 How hard are they working to try and get something out of this?
01:19 Okay, we've got a lot of officers here today,
01:21 working hard to try and piece together what's happened.
01:24 We're appealing information in relation to this.
01:26 Does anybody have any ring doorbell footage, any dashcam footage of anything that they think is strange
01:32 or out of character that they would like to report to us that would be really helpful?
01:36 If anybody's seen anything shortly before 11 o'clock last night
01:39 or heard anything in the immediate area for them to contact us in relation to that?
01:45 We know that it's a man who was injured and has since died.
01:49 What was the time frame that he died? Can you say that? Was he pronounced dead at the scene?
01:53 He was pronounced dead here, unfortunately.
01:56 However, we're working really hard to put together what's happened last night
02:00 prior to officers coming and finding him here.
02:03 Great, thank you. That's all the questions for me.
02:07 Where are we at with arrests at all? I'm going to presume that we've not made any and we've not got any sort of...
02:13 At this stage, we've not made any arrests, but like I say, we're in the really early stages of the investigation,
02:17 so we're just trying to work all of that out, piece it all together so we can try and move forward really quickly.
02:22 And we've kind of covered a lot of questions and stuff like that, but it sounds very normal at the minute
02:26 and this is very unusual. So why a conference? Why having reporters down to a scene as like a proper thing?
02:35 Because this is quite a large community, obviously we've got a large area where we've got police officers on the cordon.
02:39 We want to offer that reassurance to the communities that we're working really hard here
02:43 to try and identify what has happened and piece that together.
02:46 But again, that appeal for witnesses or information, anybody that's got any information that can help us
02:51 move this investigation forward, we would really appreciate that.
02:53 To report that online or to contact us on 101 or to speak to one of the officers here at the scene.
02:59 Thank you.