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A 42-year-old woman was fatally shot in east London on Tuesday evening in a rare deadly shooting, the authorities said.
Police found three people with gunshot wounds. The woman, whose name has not been released, died at the scene. A 20-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy were taken to a hospital, where their conditions are being assessed, Metropolitan Police said in a news release.
The shooting occurred in the Hackney neighborhood at about 6:30 p.m. local time. No arrests have been made.
Shootings, and guns, are far less common in British cities than in the United States. There were only nine gun homicides in London in 2022. By comparison, in Houston, a city with less than a fourth of London’s population, there were 401 gun homicides in 2021, according to an analysis of F.B.I. data by the gun control group Everytown.
Firearms are strictly regulated in the United Kingdom. Residents must obtain a license from the police if they wish to own a gun. Certain types of guns are outlawed altogether. For instance, Parliament eventually banned handguns after the 1996 Dunblane massacre, a deadly school shooting, which killed 16 schoolchildren and one teacher.
The investigation is still in its “early stages,” Detective Superintendent Vicky Tunstall, from the local policing team in Hackney, said in a statement.
“I do not underestimate the impact this incident will have on people in Hackney and I understand the community will want answers about what has happened this evening. We will share further information as our investigation progresses,” she said.
“Gun crime has no place on the streets of London and we will do all we can to bring whoever is responsible for this despicable crime to justice.”
There were 28 homicide victims killed by shooting in all of England and Wales in 2022, according to the Office of National Statistics.
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