The 14-year-old boy killed in a sword attack in London yesterday was a pupil at the same school attended by Nottingham stabbing victim Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Sky News understands.

The development comes after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said one of the officers injured in the rampage in Hainault nearly lost her hand while apprehending the suspect on Tuesday morning.

The schoolboy who was killed was a student at Bancroft’s private school in Woodford Green.

Grace O’Malley-Kumar – who was killed in a knife attack in Nottingham in June last year – was a former student at the school.

The school’s flag is flying at half mast today after the most recent tragedy.

Ms O’Malley-Kumar’s parents offered support to the schoolboy’s family this morning.

The boy’s mother works at Holy Family Catholic School, which said in a statement on its website on Tuesday: “It is with great sadness that I share with you the news of the death of the child of one of our staff members.

“Mrs Anjorin’s son was taken from this life suddenly this morning on his way to school. Please keep Mrs Anjorin, her husband and their other children in your prayers.”

Four other people were injured in the attack in northeast London, including the female police officer and another officer.

None of their injures are thought to be life-threatening.

Police have said they don’t think it was a targeted attack, or terror-related, and they were working to establish the circumstances of what took place.

Officers were initially called to the scene at 7am with footage showing police apprehending a sword-wielding suspect after he was tasered.

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

Sir Mark has said officers were “on the ground in 12 minutes” and that “some of the first contacts led to officers being very severely injured”.

He said the two officers who were hospitalised suffered “horrifically serious injuries”.

Speaking on LBC this morning, he added: “I was talking to the family and colleagues of the woman officer who has a really badly damaged arm, really seriously damaged, the surgeon spent many hours basically putting her arm back together.”

Asked about reports she nearly lost her hand in the attack, Sir Mark said they were “not a million miles away”.

An inspector also suffered a serious hand injury during the police response, with Sir Mark adding: “I saw him before the operation, he was in good spirits… I think that’s partly the morphine, to be honest.”

Sir Mark did not confirm whether the two officers in hospital were the ones seen tasering the attacker.

The Met chief added that the 36-year-old suspect was detained after 22 minutes.

Dramatic footage has shown the moment he was tasered on a driveway before several officers with batons approached him after he hit the ground.

The words “suspect contained” are eventually heard as a female officer pulls the sword away from the attacker.

Sir Mark said this morning: “People say officers run towards danger.

“What you’ve actually seen on some of the videos that are around social media and on news sites such as your own… you actually see what that really looks like. You’ve got officers running towards someone who’s waving a sword.”

Police have said the suspect crashed a van into a house near the Tube station in Hainault before stabbing a number of people.

The man has not yet been interviewed as he remains in hospital due to the injuries he suffered in the crash.

Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said there has been speculation about the suspect’s background, including police contact with him.

She said that “despite urgent and extensive checks today, we have found no trace of a prior incident involving him so far, but we will of course continue to make those inquiries”.

‘I can’t stop envisioning the boy’s face’

James Fernando, someone who lives close to where the rampage took place, said the suspect had asked one of his neighbours to “take the telephone from him to tell whoever was on the phone his location”.

Mr Fernando added: “Within two seconds after that she’s realised something isn’t right, started running and he’s pulled a samurai sword from the back of his trousers.”

He saw the neighbour shout to warn a boy who was on his way to school – but the man attacked him.

“It’s quite traumatising now. I can’t stop envisioning the boy’s face,” Mr Fernando added.

Speaking about what he saw of the suspect, Mr Fernando said: “He was running around, still after the police officers came, with the sword in his hand looking for victims.”

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News App. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

People from poorer neighbourhoods in England are dying increasingly younger than those in wealthier areas, a report has found.

General life expectancy has fallen by 0.2 years for men and remained the same for women since 2010-12, according to the research, at 82.8 and 78.8 for females and males respectively in 2020-22.

It had increased over the previous 10 years, from 2000-2 to 2010-12, by 2.3 and 3.1 years for females and males respectively.

But while the COVID pandemic contributed to the change in figures up until 2022, researchers from the UCL’s Institute of Health Equity (IHE) said healthy life expectancy had fallen slightly for women and stalled for men in the 10 years until 2019.

Healthy life expectancy is the average number of years that a person can expect to live in “full health”, by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury.

Although there has been a markedly slower rate of increase in life expectancy at birth in England since 2011 than in previous decades, even this increase has varied across regions – with a widening of the north-south gap and women.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, IHE director, said: “Put simply, Britain is a poor, sick country, getting sicker, with a few rich and healthy people; the results of a dismal failure of central government policies since 2010.

“Not only is health the foremost concern of your local constituents, communities and businesses, health is also an indicator of how well a nation is performing. Unfortunately, Britain is performing poorly.”

The study, England’s Widening Health Gap: Local Places Falling Behind, found women in the most deprived neighbourhoods had seen a fall in their life expectancy even before the pandemic.

And its headline findings showed there were no statistically significant decreases in inequalities in life expectancy for men or women in any of the English local authorities.

The largest increase in inequality between 2010 and 2019 was in female life expectancy in Kensington and Chelsea – where the difference between the poorest and richest neighbourhoods grew from 6.2 to 11.9 years.

This means women in the most affluent parts of the area are expected to live to an average of 90.7 years, compared to 77.2 in the poorest neighbourhoods.

Among the other local authorities with the biggest increases in inequality of life expectancy was also for women, in Stoke-on-Trent – where the difference grew from 3.8 to 8.9 years (the ages of 75.8 and 85.8).

Of English regions, the North East saw the largest growth in life expectancy inequality, with a rise of 1.9 years among women and 1.5 years among men.

The IHE said there had been statistically significant increases in life expectancy inequality in 17 local authorities in total.

Sir Michael has written to the 58 MPs whose constituencies lie wholly or partially in these local authorities, along with each area’s local authority leaders, to highlight “particularly concerning health trends” in the areas.

Among them are six former or current cabinet ministers, including former prime minister Liz Truss, levelling up,
housing and communities secretary Michael Gove and former housing, communities and local government secretary Robert Jenrick.

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

Sir Michael added: “This is a dismal state of affairs. I’m saying to party leaders: make this the central plank of the next government – stop policies harming health and widening health inequalities.

“To MPs: If you care about the health of your constituents, you must be appalled by their deteriorating health. It’s time for action and political leadership across the board.

“Important as is the NHS – publicly funded and free at the point of use – action is needed on the social determinants of health: the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These social conditions are the main causes of health inequalities.”

A government spokesperson said: “As set out in our Levelling Up White Paper, we are committed to narrowing the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030 and to increasing healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035.”

The complete list of the 17 local authorities with statistically significant increases in life expectancy inequality are:

• Amber Valley
• Bexley
• Cambridgeshire
• Charnwood
• Cornwall
• County Durham
• Erewash
• Guildford
• Kensington and Chelsea
• Newark and Sherwood
• Norfolk
• Norwich
• North Somerset
• Northumberland
• Rotherham
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Telford and Wrekin

Less than a week after she survived a migrant boat disaster in which five people died, Heivin is standing in a car park next to a shabby hotel near London, smiling and joyous.

After a string of failed attempts to reach England, her dream has finally been fulfilled.

“It was really hard and dangerous for me, but I finally made it here, thanks to God,” she said.

“I am very happy to be here because I think it is a safe country and it is very suitable for me. But part of me is still in shock that the journey is finally over.”

She is a slight young woman, just 18 years old but blessed with a confidence that allowed her to persevere when others might have given up.

She left Kurdistan around a year ago, crossing Europe to France, and living in camps, woodland and in underpasses along the way.

“It was very hard,” she said.

“Especially when you’re on your own, and a young woman. It can be very dangerous.”

Kurdistan is a region that straddles Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, and whose people have historically faced ethnic and political persecution from the governments of those countries.

Heivin tried 30 times to reach England from the coast of northern France, with her penultimate attempt seeing her take a place on a boat that was wildly overcrowded after it was violently hijacked by a rival group of migrants.

In the ensuing melee, five people died, including a young child.

It was shortly after that trauma that we met Heivin for the first time, as she was recovering from the ordeal of that boat.

The memories still haunted her of seeing people crushed.

Even then, Heivin said she would be trying again and, in the early hours of Saturday morning, she made it.

Her boat left a French beach in the early hours and chugged towards Britain.

The people smugglers who arranged the crossing, she said, were “good with us”.

“We only had to wait for three to four hours, then we went down the beach and boarded the dinghy,” she added.

Read more:
Migrants spotted in the Channel and rescued by coastguard
Over half of asylum seekers set for Rwanda removal can’t be found

But the boat, as so often with these crossings, was ill-equipped and struggled in the water before being intercepted by a French coastguard vessel, which offered assistance.

Of nearly 60 people on board, 33 were taken off, but the others, including Heivin, remained at sea, determined to get to Britain.

Heivin said: “This time I went, but I always had the feeling that I would not make it and have to return like the other times.

“It was also extremely cold that night and my clothes were soaking wet. I kept saying to myself ‘I won’t make it’, but thank God, I did make it.”

The decisive point came when the dinghy entered British waters and, before long, the passengers on board were collected by a Border Force vessel and taken to the mainland.

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

I asked her: “How did you feel when you saw the British boat?”

Heivin’s face breaks into a broad smile as she says “so happy” with a shake of her head that is loaded with emotion.

She added: “I felt overjoyed. I didn’t expect that we would make it to Britain. I thought we would just end up back in France again, like the other times.

“When I saw the British boat, I was extremely happy – I just can’t explain it. I’m so happy.”