A teenager who was the intended target of a gangland shooting in which a five-year-old girl was critically injured was helping police hunt for the gunman last night.
Thursha Kamaleswaran’s three-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother saw her being shot in the chest. A £50,000 reward was offered for the capture of those responsible for the shooting in a shop in South London in which Thursha’s shopkeeper uncle was also critically wounded.
Yesterday detectives from Operation Trident, which tackles gun crime in black communities, arrested a man aged 19. He is now helping police inquiries.
Meanwhile Thursha, who is described as a “chatty and cheerful” child, opened her eyes for the first time since since the shooting on Tuesday. Her family said that they were praying for her full recovery. Her mother, Sharmila, and father, Sassi, who are both Sri Lankan, were at her bedside in King’s College Hospital, Camberwell. She and Roshan Selvakumar, 35, who was shot in the face, were said to be in a critical but stable condition.
The three children and their mother were visiting Mr Selvakumar’s shop, Stockwell Food & Wine in Brixton when they were caught inwhat was thought to be a gangland turf war. Two youths had fled into the shop as three hooded teenagers on bikes pursued them.
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CCTV footage showed one of the gang members throw down his bike and lean into the shop before opening fire, hitting Thursha and her uncle. Both gangs, whose members were said to be between 14 and 17, fled into a nearby estate.
One of the youths inside the shop was said to have boasted later that he had dodged bullets fired in what he described as an attempted “gangland hit”. A shop worker who did not want to be named said: “He told me, ‘I was shot at before’. They are trying to be little gangsters. We always see them hanging around.”
Last night extra police — including officers from the Territorial Support Group, a police unit specialising in public order containment — were deployed amid fears that revenge attacks could take place in Brixton or Stockwell. A detective said that up to 50 gangs operated in the area.
Many of the gangs are linked either to housing estates or postcodes, and many fight over the sale of hard drugs. A senior police source said that a dedicated “guns and gangs unit” had recovered 60 guns and 60 imitation guns in the Borough of Lambeth in recent months. He also said that gun crime had fallen by 25 per cent.
Detective Chief Inspector Tony Broughton said: “One of the youths who first ran into the shop has come forward to police and is assisting us. He is a young man, under 20. He has given his account of running into the shop and taking cover. We are trying to trace the other individual and appeal to him to come forward.”
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Gail Brannan, the head teacher of Fairlop Primary School in Ilford, which Thursha attends, said: “We hope that she makes a full recovery soon.”