A surgeon has warned how stab victims can ‘bleed out’ and be dead in minutes as part of a chilling warning to save young people from losing their lives to knife crime.

Barney Green said his team of specialists in South Tees Hospitals treat people with knife wounds every three days and said stabbings on Teesside have reached ‘epidemic’ proportions.

The consultant vascular surgeon said: “There is not a single place on the human body where you can safely stab somebody.

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“You can end their life by stabbing them in the forearm or the leg.

“There is no safe space. Our bodies are very soft flesh and we might have some bones in places but a blade is a thin and sharp.

“If it is thrust with enough force, it penetrate and will divide bone – I have seen it before – and cause catastrophic injury.

“When you think of a 2cm wide blade, if that goes through the neck that is the carotid artery gone.

“You can lose your entire circulatory volume of blood fairly rapidly. We are talking minutes.”  

The Northern Echo: From left, John Holden, ACC Richard Baker, Barney Green and DCI Stu Hodgson From left, John Holden, ACC Richard Baker, Barney Green and DCI Stu Hodgson (Image: Sarah Caldecott)Mr Green gave a powerful presentation featuring shocking images of stab wounds to students at Middlesbrough College at the launch of Cleveland Police’s new anti-knife crime campaign.

He said dealing with such injuries could be harrowing for medical staff, especially in a highly emotionally-charged environment with victims’ loved ones.

Mr Green said: “It is a burden and while we are professionally engaged at the time we get home and think about it and it is devastating.

“Young people should not have their lives ended in this way.”

The Northern Echo launched an anti-knife crime campaign in response to the deaths of several teenagers across the region in recent years and is now calling for the issue to be discussed in schools as part of the National Curriculum as part of a raft of measures.

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Cleveland Violence Reduction Unit is working with the North East Knife Crime Taskforce , which was set by the newspaper to improve communication between agencies across the region fighting the scourge.

The new Cleveland Police campaign, Carrying a Blade Doesn’t Give You an Edge, is aimed at 11 to 24 year-olds, and centres around a short animation which tells the story of a teenager who got involved in knife crime, but has now managed to turn his life around.
The Northern Echo: Ell HuckneyEll Huckney (Image: Sarah Caldecott)

It was designed by 23-year-old animation student Ell Hockney from Northallerton who was also at the launch.

Ell, who is doing a degree at the Northern School of Art in Hartlepool, said: “It has been quite rewarding to see the effect it has had and it is nice that it has been received well.”

There have been 609 knife crimes in the Cleveland force area from January 1 to August 31 and of those, 186 victims have been under the ages of 25, and 153 knife crime suspects have been under the age of 25.

Nationally, Cleveland Police is the second highest police area for levels of knife crime, after West Midlands.

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Chief Inspector Stu Hodgson, the force lead on knife crime, said: "Most children and young people have no idea of the danger in which they put themselves and others, by picking up and taking a knife out in public.

“The purpose of the campaign is to educate teenagers about the reality of carrying a knife and show them that there is help out there if they feel themselves being pulled into this type of crime.

“We are here to help and we want to protect them from harm – this is not just about us wanting to catch more young people with knives. 

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“Carrying a knife or other bladed weapons is a serious criminal offence and if convicted of this, it can seriously damage someone’s future.  

“We want young people to stop and think about how they would feel if they seriously hurt or even killed someone.

“It is a myth that carrying a knife or blade provides you with protection – the reality is that it makes you more susceptible to harm.”