The latest teenage victim of knife crime in London called for his mother as he lay dying in a South London doorway.

Three masked and hooded boys attacked Shakilus Townsend, 16, with knives and a baseball bat, police said yesterday. Witnesses said that one of the gang members then walked into a convenience store and demanded a drink.

Police are investigating suggestions that Shakilus, known as Shaki, was lured into the confrontation by a girl, who then witnessed the attack.

As he lay bleeding, he told residents who comforted him that he was afraid of dying. Dee Bamina, 35, tried to stem his bleeding with a towel after her neighbour brought him to the communal doorway of her block of flats.

“I think a group of boys must have been after the boy. All I heard was them saying ‘Get him from the other side’.” She saw four or five boys aged 15 to 19 with scarves covering their faces. One had a baseball bat. A girl had also been with them, she said.

“I tried to ask him his name and to tell him to calm down and lie down because he was trying to get up and go. He was saying, ‘I don’t want to die’ and, ‘Where’s my mum? I want my mum’.”

He had looked terrified. “He was bleeding, you could see blood on his hand, his chest and around his stomach and around the abdomen, the whole area. He wasn’t cold at the time. I touched him and spoke to him. I asked him his name, which he gave me. He was talking really well.

“I tried to comfort him to tell him to stay still. I put a towel round him to contain the bleeding. The last thing he told us was, ‘I can’t breathe’. He was gasping for air, trying to get up and leave, but he fell back.”

Detectives described the attack, which took place just before 2pm on Thursday, as “another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife”.

Shakilus died in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, South London, just after midnight – the eighteenth teenager to die violently in London this year.

One witness said that she saw a boy with an orange cloth on his head walking calmly away from the scene. The woman, who asked not to be named, later learnt that he had gone into a branch of Costcutter and demanded a drink. The shopkeeper had responded: “I am not a charity.”

Shakilus told those who helped him that he did not know his attackers. One witness found a knife about a foot long lying in short grass near by.

Ms Bamina said the attack was quick. “There were about four or five boys and one girl. They had their faces covered. I could only see her from the back, she was a young girl, very slim.

“They chased him and he was running back here thinking he could get away, but they must have caught him.

“I saw him getting stabbed and beaten using a baseball bat. One of the neighbours brought him into the building as she saw what happened. She saw what was happening and shouted at the boys, ‘Stop it, leave the boy’, and they ran away.”

Detective Chief Inspector Cliff Lyons, of the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Serious Crime Command, said that Shakilus had been a victim of a “planned and targeted attack”.

The group of seven or eight youths were wearing hooded tops and bandanas so only their eyes were visible. They stabbed their victim more than once and beat him with a baseball bat.

Mr Lyons said that Shakilus’s parents, Nicola and Derek, and his four siblings were devastated. No one has been arrested. “Given that this happened outside a block of flats in broad daylight, I am certain there are people who will have witnessed this murder.”

Witnesses may ring the incident room in Sutton or Crimestoppers.

Shakilus was attacked four days after Ben Kinsella, 16, the brother of the former EastEnders actress Brooke Kinsella, was stabbed to death in Islington, North London. On Thursday, it emerged that the bodies of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, French students aged 23, had been found riddled with knife wounds after a flat fire in New Cross, southeast London.

Hamouda Bessaad, 34, was stabbed to death on Old Kent Road, southeast London, on Monday. Dee Willis, 28, died after a knife attack in Peckham on Tuesday.

A 17-year-old boy who lives near where Shakilus was attacked said that stabbings were commonplace. “If he hadn’t died, no one would have cared about this, it would have just been another stabbing. How are the police or the Government going to be able to sort this out if we as kids don’t know why this sort of stuff is going on?”

Matilda Higgins, 43, whose 17-year-old son Richard went to Shakilus’s aid, said she was scared to live in the area.

“I am frightened every time my son leaves the house and I do not breathe until I hear his key in the lock.”

— The family of Ben Kinsella came face to face yesterday with the three youths accused of his murder. Ben’s mother Deborah, father George and sister Jade sat in Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court hand in hand as the teenagers appeared in the dock. Juress Kika, 18, Michael Alleyne, 18, and Jade Braithwaite, 19, were remanded in custody until October 13.

A week of violence

Sunday Ben Kinsella is stabbed to death in the early hours after being caught up in a fight in a pub

Monday Ben’s sister Brooke Kinsella, a former EastEnders actress, implores London’s youth to step away from knife crime

Tuesday Hundreds of teenagers march in Islington to protest against knife culture. Dee Willis, 28, is stabbed to death outside a supermarket in Peckham

Wednesday Boris Johnson warns teenagers not to intervene in fights because they could get stabbed. Police disclose that two French research students had been savagely murdered in New Cross, southeast London, on Sunday

Thursday: Shakilus Townsend is attacked by a gang in South London. He dies in hospital shortly after midnight, becoming the eighteenth teenager to meet a violent death in London this year

Friday Sir Paul Stephenson, the Deputy Commissioner, says knife crime has overtaken terrorism as Scotland Yard’s No 1 priority

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