OPINION: Why the catalogue of Doncaster gun and knife violence has to end

This time, two separate shootings in the space of just a few days. A few days prior to that, a man being attacked with weapons and another shooting.

The list goes on – and there appears to be no end in sight to the tragic timeline of violence seeing blood shed on the streets of our town on a frighteningly regular basis.

When I first started as a reporter in Doncaster back in the 90s, covering incidents of knife and gun crime, was a rarity, murders even less so.

There would be one such tragedy a year at most.

In the last 12 months, this newspaper has reported on three separate knife related murders, 20 shootings and 13 stabbings as well as other horrific acts of violence including rapes and sexual assault.

It is absolutely unprecedented. Almost to a point now where a shooting barely makes any waves with our readers. It has become expected. The norm. It’s just Doncaster – and that’s what happens here now.

But it shouldn’t be like that. We don’t want to reporting incidents like this on an almost daily basis.

While some of the incidents are unconnected, it is quite clear many of them are, tied into feuding gangs, drug wars and tit-for-tat retaliation.

The violence simply has to end.

Our overstretched police are spending night after night tackling with wannabe gangsters driving the streets of the town, firing guns and flashing around blades as if Doncaster were some huge real life version of the video game Grand Theft Auto.

But this isn’t a game. These are real lives. And lives are being lost.

In the last three months alone, Ryan Theobald, 20, Janis Kozlovskis, 17 and Joe Sarpong, 18 have all been killed in horrific knife related incidents.

There’s a very realistic chance that that grim tally will have risen again by the end of the year unless the town’s feuding gangs put down their knives, put down their guns and stop this sensless violence.

Please, just stop it – now.