Teenager dies after being shot in south London street

Shooting comes amid spate of deaths on capital's streets

A teenage boy has died after being found with a gunshot wound on a south London street.

The 17-year-old has been named by his mother as Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton.

He was found ”suffering from a gunshot injury” in Southwark on Saturday evening, the Metropolitan Police said.

“Officers, including firearms officers, attended,” the force said, adding that both the London Ambulance Service and Air Ambulance provided first aid.

He was pronounced dead around 50 minutes after he was found.

While formal identification is yet to take place, the force said that the boy’s family had been notified. No arrests have been made.

The shooting comes amid a spate of deaths on the capital’s streets, which has seen more than 60 murders so far this year, amid a nationwide rise in violent crime.

The teenager’s next of kin have been informed but formal identification is yet to take place.

A post-mortem examination is due to be conducted.

No arrests have been made.

Last Monday a 38-year-old man was shot dead near Queensbury Tube station in the north-west of the city. Shortly afterwards, a 26-year-old man arrived at a local hospital with a gunshot injury and remains in a stable condition.

It was unclear whether the two were linked.

Statistics released earlier this month showed knife crime rose by 22 per cent across England and Wales and gun crime by 11 per cent in 2017.

The use of blanket stop and search powers has risen four-fold after police vowed to target “freely available” weapons in London and the government’s first-ever Serious Violence Strategy has mounted a taskforce to collaborate on solutions.

A new Serious Violence Strategy released by the government last month warned social media was worsening gang crime and violence.

As well as being used to glamorise selling drugs and the profits, the Home Office said it was being used to taunt rivals.

“The growth in smart-phones has transformed social media accessibility and created an almost unlimited opportunity for rivals to antagonise each other, and for those taunts to be viewed by a much larger audience for a much longer time period,” the report said. “This may have led to cycles of tit-for-tat violence.”

But the document was heavily criticised for omitting a Home Office document suggesting budget cuts had “likely contributed” to rising violence and “encouraged” offenders, after police officer numbers plummeted to a record low in the autumn.