Second carnival attack victim dies

Arrests were up significantly at this year's carnival

A second man has died from his injuries after being attacked by a gang of men at the Notting Hill Carnival, police said.

The 28-year-old Asian was punched and kicked to the ground by the gang in Blenheim Crescent, west London at around 1930 BST on Bank Holiday Monday, the Metropolitan Police confirmed.

Delivery driver Greg Watson, 21, was stabbed to death in a separate attack at around 2200 BST on the same evening.

The men's deaths are the first at the London carnival since 1997, and police say they are treating both incidents as murder.

'Innocent reveller'

The latest victim's mother flew in from Pakistan on Tuesday night to be at his bedside at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, before she heard he had died.

On Monday, Mr Watson, from Northolt, west London, was taken by ambulance to the same hospital, where he was declared dead.

The 21-year-old father of a three-week-old daughter was an innocent reveller and the victim of an unprovoked attack, police said.

Police said that while the number of people attending the two-day event was lower than previous years, at about 1.5 million, the number of crimes had risen by 27%.

Greg Watson had just become a father

Prior to the fatal stabbing of Mr Watson, police had recorded 89 arrests at the two-day event, most of them for public order and drugs offences.

Officers said two people were injured when they fell into the basement of a house after its railings collapsed during a crowd crush.

Both were treated by the ambulance service at the scene and one was said to be "quite seriously injured".

Police also said another man had been stabbed and another had been glassed in the face.

The annual multi-cultural carnival is Europe's biggest street festival, attracting up to 2 million people into a concentrated area of west London.

The trouble at this year's event has prompted calls from local councillors that the carnival should either be scaled down or moved to another area of London in the future.