Police rule out link between two stabbings and shooting in Sheffield

Investigations were launched after three acts of violence in the city over a five-day period, with detectives initially believing they were all linked.

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On Thursday, April 18, 2019, a taxi driver and youth worker was stabbed in his head as he sat in his car in South View Road, Sharrow.

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Four days later, two men – aged 18 and 26 – were stabbed when violence flared on Abbeydale Road.

And in the early hours of the following day, former Sheffield councillor Mohammad Maroof’s home in Edgedale Road, Nether Edge, was shot at.

The incidents led to an increase in police patrols in the Sharrow and Abbeydale Road area and members of the public voiced their concerns about crime spiralling out of control.

Earlier this week Bassan Khan, 19, was jailed for two years and six months for the taxi driver attack.

Khan, of South View Road, pleading guilty to wounding and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.

It has since emerged that the other two incidents initially thought to have been linked are no longer believed to have been connected to the stabbing.

South Yorkshire Police said the other two cases were ‘discontinued due to a lack of evidence’.

No explanation was given for the taxi driver attack by South Yorkshire Police after the court case this week.

But the victim, who works with community group Mums United in neighbourhoods around Sheffield, reaching out to gang members and mentoring young people, said he believes his youth work was the reason for the attack.

He said: “I knew him (Khan) from working in the area but he wasn’t interested in listening.

“He didn’t want us around as we were getting in the way of his business – but the attack won’t stop me working in these communities.

“If anything it has made me more determined to help all the other people who are doing such important work in Sheffield.”

He said he would have preferred Khan to have been offered rehabilitation rather than jail.