/ 1 August 2005

Second arrest after racist axe attack in Britain

Police in the north of England on Sunday arrested a 17-year-old in the Liverpool suburb of Huyton in connection with a racist attack in which a black student was bludgeoned to death with an axe, they announced early on Monday.

The 18-year-old student, Anthony Walker, was left with the axe embedded in his skull in the ”vicious and unprovoked” assault near his home in Liverpool on Friday night, in a shocking case in multi-cultural Britain.

”Merseyside police has arrested a 17-year-old man from Huyton in connection with the death of Anthony Walker. He has been taken in a Merseyside police station where he will be questioned,” the announcement said.

An 18-year-old had earlier been arrested in connection with the case, but he was released on bail pending further enquiry, the police said.

The dead man, who had hoped to train as a lawyer, was attacked by a group of three or four men after spending the evening at home with his girlfriend, who is white, police said.

”What we are dealing with here is a vicious and unprovoked attack on a young black man which we believe to be racially motivated,” said the region’s deputy police chief Bernard Lawson after the attack. – Sapa-AFP