Turf war theory in knife murder of teenager

A teenager stabbed to death near the site of a planned Olympics party may have found himself in the middle of a turf war, it emerged yesterday.

Charles Junior Hendricks, 18, became the 24th teenager to be murdered in the capital this year when he was attacked near a bus garage in Walthamstow, east London, early on Sunday. He was taken to Whipps Cross hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Organisers of the London Olympics had intended to show the closing ceremony of the Beijing games on a giant screen near the scene, but police cordoned off the area following the stabbing.

Yesterday, his friends said CJ, as he was known, was not a gang member but the victim of rivalry between two groups.

One woman, visiting the spot where he was killed, said: "It's called gang war. He wasn't in a gang himself, but he got caught up in something that was going on, he was in between something."