He was 17 and fatally stabbed outside a KFC on a London street. It was the horrible culmination of a series of lesser violent crimes and altercations in the area. Now we live in Canberra, the city whose reputation as the most boring place in Australia is one at which locals understandably bristle. The Bondi Junction stabbings of 2024, in which six were killed in a Sydney shopping centre, remain fresh in the minds of many Australians. Knife-wielding, angry young men are considered an aberration rather than a standard hazard in the local shopping centre at 6pm.

Source: The Irish Times April 08, 2026 13:15 UTC