A teenager has been fatally stabbed just after his 19th birthday as he attended a friend’s 18th birthday celebrations.
Ziggy Worrell-Owusu was attacked at the Basement Shisha Lounge in Ilford, east London in the early hours of Thursday.
He had gone to the bar to celebrate a friend’s 18th birthday the night before, also his own birthday, but was stabbed during an altercation.
Paramedics took him to hospital but he was pronounced dead at 1.45am. A postmortem examination found he died from a single stab wound.
Scotland Yard said that while Worrell-Owusu, from Hackney, has not been formally identified, his next of kin have been informed.
A Met spokesman said: “It has been established that Ziggy had attended an 18th birthday party with a group of his friends at the venue and there were approximately 100 people in attendance.
“At some point during the evening, an altercation occurred which led to Ziggy being stabbed.”
DI Euan McKeeve said a large number of young people would have witnessed the incident and the events leading up to it, but there have been no arrests.
He said: “Some of these people may be reluctant to tell police what happened but I would urge them to come forward of their own accord and speak to us.
“We are working through the evidence in our possession to establish who was at the party and we will identify all those who were there.”
He also appealed to parents of teenagers at the party to urge them to come forward.
Ten young people aged 19 or under have been stabbed to death in the capital since the start of 2016.
At the launch of a rollout of 22,000 body-worn cameras to London’s police officers last week, the mayor, Sadiq Khan, said there had been a 16% increase in knife crime across the capital in two years.