The mobile footage homes in on four young men in a scuffle on Primrose Hill, a London park, on a balmy spring early evening. It is one of the warmest days of the year so far.
The men land in a ball on the grass among crowds of other young people who have gathered at the popular spot to view the city below. A girl in a pink top in the foreground films the fight. Off camera, another girl can be heard screaming.
As the young men break from each other and scramble to their feet, one has a patch of blood visible on his back. Another one of the brawling group appears to swing for this bloodied man with a knife, before running off. One of the others appears to limp away.
“What on earth is going on?” says the man holding the mobile phone, filming.
RM Block
It is London’s latest fatal stabbing, captured in a viral video that has sparked yet another round of public soul-searching about stabbings of young people in the city.
The scene unfolded last Tuesday evening at about 6.30pm at the beauty spot in a salubrious part of north London, close to Regent’s Park. It appears to capture the incident which led to the death of Finbar Sullivan (21), a student and music video maker who died at the scene after being stabbed in the leg. Another man was injured.
Sullivan had gone to the park to use a new camera given to him for his birthday by his father, musician and prominent former Soho nightclub owner, Chris Sullivan. A fight broke out. Chris Sullivan says his son was trying to protect a friend.
“He was going to do his showreel today with me,” the father told reporters. “Now he’s dead. He’s my only son. He can never be replaced.”
The dead young man came from a prosperous family steeped in the arts. Sullivan’s maternal grandfather is New Zealander Michael Seresin, a Hollywood cinematographer who worked on films such as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, as well as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Sullivan lived with his father in Maida Vale, a wealthy district.
“It’s Primrose Hill for God’s sake,” Chris Sullivan said. “It’s not somewhere you expect this.”
Across the city in other, grittier parts of London, media reporting of knife crime abounds.
The day before Sullivan’s death, just before 4am on Monday, police were called to Ruby Street in Peckham. Aurelio Mejia (26) was found, stabbed, outside Laxia Lounge. He died of his injuries. Another young man was critically injured. A third man was also injured, and was later arrested by police on suspicion of murder.
On Wednesday, the day after Sullivan’s killing, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed on Green Lane in Croydon, south London. He survived. Another young man was stabbed to death on the same day as Sullivan near Café Rosh in Shadwell, East London. Heading into the weekend, police were still trying to identify his family.
Perceptions of London as a hotbed of knife crime have been fuelled by a cascade of media reports in recent years. While police were investigating Sullivan’s death in north London, in south London other officers were issuing an appeal over the 2024 stabbing incident of Rijkaard Siafa (22). Two men were convicted of his killing, but a third suspect has not yet been found. “The pain has not changed,” said Hassanatu Bah, Siafa’s mother.
A political debate has sprung up over whether London is really in the grip of a spiralling epidemic of stabbings. Those aligned with the right wing of politics, in particular, argue that knife crime is out of control.
At the weekend, the Sun ran a column by Tony Parsons, who claimed the Primrose Hill stabbing incident proved London was “teetering on the edge of lawlessness”. This chimes with the views of many on social media, where the viral video of the incident that led to Sullivan’s death was shared over and over again all week.
Yet Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, argues that violent crime in London is really falling, with the lowest level of murders in 11 years. He says populist right-wing accounts amplify the notion that attacks in London are on the increase. Last week, he also accused social media companies of profiting from the charged debate.
“Disinformation has become an industry: an ‘outrage economy’ organised around a ‘division dividend’ which allows people to profit from poison,” he said. “And today, the captains of the ‘outrage economy’ have London in their sights.”
London Metropolitan Police say that from January to November last year, knife crime fell each month compared with the same periods a year before.
Victims were mostly male and more than half were aged under 25. In 2024, roughly 110 “knife enabled incidents” each month resulted in severe or fatal injury. In 2025, it was 103 per month.
Each incident, however, is a deep tragedy for those involved.
“I’m so broken-hearted, I can’t believe it,” Chris Sullivan, the father of Finbar, killed at Primrose Hill, told the Daily Mail. “He was the most beautiful, lovely, outgoing, loving boy. He was just a really lovely person.”
