Bristol Knife Crime: Why Young Black Men Are Dying in 2-4s vs 1-6s Postcode Gang Violence While Council Cuts Youth Services.

St Pauls, Easton postcode rivalry has killed Eddie Kinuthia, Darrian Williams, Dontae Davis, whilst Bristol City Council prioritises traffic schemes over youth violence prevention in deprived areas.

Eddie Kinuthia, 19. Darrian Williams, 16. Dontae Davis, 18. Takayo Nembhard, 21.

All young Black men. All dead. All killed by other young Black men.

That’s the fact. Not the comfortable version where we say “youth violence” or “postcode rivalry affecting diverse communities.” The actual fact: Young Black men in Bristol are killing other young Black men over which postcode they’re associated with.

Now—half of you just decided I’m racist for stating that. The other half are nodding because you think it confirms Black people are violent. You’re both wrong. And you’re both why these kids keep dying.

According to prosecution evidence at Bristol Crown Court, there have been at least fifty violent incidents since 2018 between the 2-4s from St Pauls and the 1-6s from Fishponds. Four murders. Knives. Machetes. Teenagers bleeding out in parks.

Every perpetrator, every victim—young Black men.

That’s not racism to notice. That’s what’s happening. While Bristol’s politicians carefully avoid saying it because acknowledging demographic reality might make someone uncomfortable.

You know what’s uncomfortable? Burying your sixteen-year-old.

Postal Sorting Codes.

The 2-4s and the 1-6s.

Not gang names. Postcodes. BS2 4. BS16. The numbers Royal Mail uses to sort your letters.

Teenagers are dying over postal sorting codes.

Eddie Kinuthia—stabbed because he associated with people from BS2 4. Darrian Williams—sixteen, no connection to either group, killed after someone asked “Are you 1-6?” Then: “2s on top.”

Dontae Davis—eighteen, killed in what prosecutors called a “gang-related” fight. Judge Peter Blair, sentencing: “This city has had enough of the violence between the 1-6s and the 2-4s.”

A High Court judge naming postal codes in a murder sentencing.

It would be funny—the stupidity of it, teenagers thinking their postcode is worth killing over—except mothers are burying their sons over which side of an administrative boundary they grew up on.

This isn’t organised crime. This isn’t drug cartels. This is teenagers identifying tribally with numbers created by the Post Office, killing each other over it. The losing side doesn’t go home disappointed. They go in the ground.

The Poverty Explanation Breaks Here.

Hartcliffe and Withywood. Six of Bristol’s eight most deprived neighbourhoods. Bishport Avenue: 211th most deprived in England—bottom 0.6 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of residents in income deprivation. Nine per cent making it to higher education.

St Pauls, Easton, Lawrence Hill, Fishponds—where kids are killing each other? Not Bristol’s most deprived. Hartcliffe is poorer. By every measure.

Hartcliffe: 43 weapons possession offences in 2024. St Pauls: 35. Similar crime. Similar deprivation.

But no teenagers stabbing each other over Hartcliffe versus Withywood postcodes.

The difference?

Hartcliffe is predominantly white working-class. The 2-4s and 1-6s territories are predominantly Black British.

Same poverty. Different demographics. Different violence patterns.

Now watch how fast people stop wanting to think about this.

What’s Actually There.

Lawrence Hill. Historically one of England’s most deprived wards. 2011 census: 59.5 per cent born in England, 11.1 per cent Somali, 3.3 per cent Jamaican, 2.3 per cent Pakistani.

Easton: 69.3 per cent born in England, significant Somali, Jamaican, Pakistani, Indian populations.

Not “diverse areas.” That’s the euphemism. These are areas with significant Black populations. Somali communities. Caribbean communities. Different migration histories, different timelines. St Pauls: historic Windrush Caribbean presence. Lawrence Hill, Easton: later Somali migration.

Then the 2010s. Gentrification. Property prices in Easton rose faster than anywhere except Westbury-on-Trym. Time Out: one of the world’s “coolest neighbourhoods.” Translation: white middle-class people discovered it was cheaper than Clifton, moved in, opened coffee shops, displaced the people who’d lived there for generations.

So: historical economic marginalisation across multiple diaspora communities, young Black men—second-generation Caribbean, first-generation Somali, other African backgrounds—dealing with poverty, discrimination, displacement pressures, forming tribal identities around postcodes that become their stable reference point in a city actively pricing them out.

Hartcliffe has none of that. Same poverty, different demographics. White working-class. No gentrification—nobody’s calling it “cool.” No drill music culture amplifying beefs. Different social networks. Different patterns.

This isn’t racial determinism. Black people aren’t genetically predisposed to postcode beef. It’s recognising: specific communities, specific histories, specific pressures, specific dynamics. The 2-4s and 1-6s emerged from conditions affecting multiple Black communities in these specific postcodes.

What Glasgow Did, What Bristol Did.

Glasgow. Young men killing each other over territory. Predominantly white Scottish working-class. Violence Reduction Unit: public health crisis model. Intensive intervention. Multi-agency coordination. Actual funding sustained over years.

Knife crime dropped over 50 per cent in a decade.

Bristol?

Cut youth services.

Not by accident. Systematically. While young Black men were dying.

2022: Targeted youth services—intensive one-to-one work with vulnerable teenagers—cut by £400,000. Twenty per cent gone. Another £400,000 redirected to South Bristol Youth Zone. Youth workers warned: this will devastate services for disadvantaged young people. Council called it “strengthening sector resilience.”

2023: North Bristol young people receiving one-to-one support—1,084 between June 2021 and May 2022—faced cuts. Youth worker Elle Williams told Cabinet: “North-based young people in crisis due to poor mental health, isolation, discrimination won’t have a one-to-one service, because the funding won’t be there.”

Council response? Asher Craig, Cabinet lead: young people in the north would be “considered equally” and wouldn’t be disadvantaged.

Yet, subsequently funding was cut.

This while Eddie Kinuthia was already dead. While Zachariah Talbert-Young and Paul Hayden were on bail for murder, about to stab another teenager. While Darrian Williams had months left before two boys would ask if he was “a 6” and put a knife in him.

The council knew. Youth workers were screaming it. Fifty violent incidents documented. Four murders. Pattern obvious.

Bristol City Council’s response: slash the precise intervention services that might have given some of these kids an alternative.

What Actually Matters to Bristol.

Four dead young men. Fifty violent incidents. Youth services cut by £400,000.

Bristol’s Green administration priorities: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

Not intensive intervention for 12-16-year-olds where postcode tribalism is recruiting. Not one-to-one youth support. Not employment programmes with actual pathways. Not mental health services without six-month waits. Traffic schemes.

East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood—implemented despite majority opposition, criticised as discriminatory against disabled people and car-dependent residents (many from minoritised backgrounds)—got priority funding. Youth services that might prevent the next Eddie, the next Darrian? Cut.

This isn’t accidental. It’s choice. What matters to Bristol’s Green administration: whether cars can access certain streets. Not whether young Black men in specific postcodes have alternatives to knife crime.

Meanwhile: Bristol247 reports knife crime tripled in decade to 2024. Hartcliffe and Hengrove: 25 incidents in 2015, 138 in 2024. Empire Fighting Chance’s Martin Wisp: “We can’t arrest our way out of violence. We need equity. Real chances: jobs, skills, trips that open horizons.”

Glasgow model works. But requires actual money. Sustained over years. Targeted at communities where violence concentrates. Not “collaborative working” or “strengthening resilience”—phrases designed to obscure you’re cutting budgets while people die.

What Bristol could do: Intensive intervention programmes for 12-16-year-olds in St Pauls, Easton, Lawrence Hill, Fishponds. One-to-one youth support funded to match demand. Employment programmes with guaranteed job pathways, not training schemes going nowhere. Mental health services without six-month waits. Community centres not shut for lack of funding. Drill music programmes channelling culture toward production and business. Proper funding for organisations like Empire Fighting Chance with trust and track record.

Cost? Less than Bristol City Council’s failed Bottle Yard Studios privatisation: £430,000. Less than yet another traffic scheme nobody asked for. Fraction of what’s committed to liveable neighbourhood implementations while cutting services where teenagers are dying.

But traffic filters. That’s the priority.

Where the Violence Actually Happens.

This violence happens in the suburbs. Hartcliffe. Easton. Lawrence Hill. St Pauls. Fishponds. Rawnsley Park.

Places the Bristol Post covers when there’s a body. Then forgets until the next one.

The city centre? Showcase. Traffic schemes. Bus lanes. Right aesthetic for right people. Suburbs—where teenagers die—out of sight until something dramatic makes headlines.

Bristol City Council: months consulting whether cars should access certain streets in relatively affluent areas. Committee meetings. Community engagement. Impact assessments. Burying audit reports to avoid scrutiny.

Intensive youth intervention where kids carry knives? Cut the budget. Move money elsewhere. Tell youth workers services will be “strengthened” while forcing redundancies.

A city where banning cars from specific roads gets more attention, more funding, more debate than preventing young men from stabbing each other. Where visual presentation of city centre matters more than what’s happening in estates where people are being killed.

Not accidental. Not oversight. Clear statement of priorities.

Green administration: walked out of Full Council when women spoke about single-sex spaces. Held placards saying “Trans Women Are Women” in the chamber. East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood: 54 per cent opposed, implemented anyway. Youth services: cut £800,000 while teenagers die over postcodes.

Identity politics and ego matter more than dead teenagers.

Ask for budget breakdowns on youth violence prevention by ward? Ask for measurable outcomes on knife crime intervention? Ask what employment programmes exist for teenagers where violence concentrates?

Silence. Or rhetoric about “collaborative working” and “strengthening resilience” while cutting services that might save lives.

What’s True.

Young Black men in specific Bristol postcodes are dying in territorial conflicts that don’t exist in equally poor white areas.

That’s not racism. That’s what’s happening.

What’s racist: using that fact to claim Black people are inherently violent, or refusing to acknowledge it because noticing patterns makes you uncomfortable. Both positions are moral cowardice. One leads to discrimination. The other leads to dead teenagers while everyone pretends not to see.

The violence isn’t explained by race. It’s explained by conditions: economic marginalisation intersecting with diaspora identity, gentrification compounding poverty, drill culture amplifying beef through social media, peer pressure making neutrality impossible, youth services systematically defunded precisely when intensive intervention was most needed.

Glasgow proved you can reduce knife crime by treating it as public health crisis. But Bristol can’t get there because it requires first saying who’s dying and where. Bristol’s institutions would rather cut youth services and announce meaningless crime statistics than acknowledge the demographic reality of which communities are burying their sons.

Eddie Kinuthia wasn’t in the 2-4s. Darrian Williams had no connection to the 1-6s. Both killed anyway because in these postcodes, you don’t get to opt out. Youth worker’s quote: “The tragedy is these kids end up involved, whether they choose to or not.”

That’s on Bristol’s institutions. Council cutting youth services whilst announcing commitments to equity. Police announcing crime reductions whilst bodies pile up. Politicians from every party talking about root causes without naming which communities face which conditions.

The Actual Choice.

You want to prevent the next Eddie? The next Darrian?

Stop treating suburban violence as something that only matters when it produces headlines. Stop prioritising showcase projects over places where people actually live and die. Stop dodging the uncomfortable bits about which communities are affected and why.

Young Black men in specific Bristol postcodes are dying in territorial conflicts that don’t exist in equally poor white areas. Investigate why. Fund intervention based on that reality. Maybe some kid who’d otherwise be carrying a knife gets an actual alternative.

Or keep announcing 18 per cent reductions in knife crime whilst mothers bury their sons. Keep perfecting the city centre whilst the suburbs bleed. Keep cutting youth services whilst implementing traffic schemes nobody asked for.

Your choice, Bristol.

But you don’t get to pretend the deaths are inexplicable when you’re cutting the services that might prevent them. You don’t get to claim ignorance when the violence is documented, the communities are known, and you’re choosing to spend money on everything except intervention that might actually work.

The suburbs see it. The families burying their sons see it.

And increasingly, everyone else sees it too.

Sources and Verification.

Every fact in this article is sourced from: Bristol Crown Court verdicts and trial testimony, Avon and Somerset Police official statements, Metropolitan Police records, Office for National Statistics Census data, Bristol City Council JSNA reports and budget documents, Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government Indices of Deprivation 2025, Crown Prosecution Service statements, and news reporting from ITV News West Country, Bristol247, Bristol World, Bath Echo, and The Bristol Cable.

Specific murder cases verified: Eddie Kinuthia (conviction November 2024, Bristol Crown Court), Darrian Williams (conviction November 2024, sentencing December 2024), Dontae Davis (conviction April 2022, sentencing statement from Judge Peter Blair KC), Takayo Nembhard (Metropolitan Police appeals, case unsolved).

Youth service cuts verified through Bristol City Council cabinet minutes, union statements, and youth worker testimony to Cabinet.

Deprivation statistics from official government indices published October 2025.

Demographics from ONS Census 2011 and Black South West Network Labour Market Policy Brief.