Woman, 44, stabbed to death inside shop on busy main road

Police were called to a busi­ness on Stan­ley Road, near the junc­tion with Wad­ham Road, short­ly after 5.05pm today, June 20 (Pic­ture: Liv­er­pool Echo)

A woman has been stabbed to death inside a shop on a busy main road on Mersey­side.

The 44-year-old was knifed on Stan­ley Road in Boo­tle just after 5pm yes­ter­day evening.

A 47-year-old man from the Widnes area was detained at the scene on sus­pi­cion of attempt­ed mur­der. A blade was also seized.

He was addi­tion­al­ly arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of mur­der after the woman died from her injuries in hos­pi­tal.

Mersey­side Police said the inci­dent is ‘being treat­ed as a domes­tic assault in which the sus­pect and vic­tim knew each oth­er’.

They pro­vid­ed links to infor­ma­tion about report­ing domes­tic abuse and sup­port organ­i­sa­tions on their web­site.

Detec­tive Inspec­tor Gavin Mulc­ahy said: ‘It is des­per­ate­ly sad that a woman lost her life ear­li­er today as a result of this inci­dent.

‘Our thoughts first and fore­most are with her fam­i­ly, who are now left to grieve her loss in the most trag­ic of cir­cum­stances. They will be ful­ly sup­port­ed by spe­cial­ist offi­cers in the com­ing days and weeks.

‘The com­mu­ni­ty too will feel the shock and upset of this inci­dent, and we will have offi­cers on high vis­i­bil­i­ty patrols in the area over the week­end to hope­ful­ly pro­vide reas­sur­ance and sup­port for any­one who needs it.

‘Detec­tives will con­tin­ue to gath­er wit­ness state­ments and foren­sic evi­dence to estab­lish a full under­stand­ing of what took place.

‘We know Stan­ley Road is a busy road, and there would have been peo­ple mak­ing their way home from work, head­ing to the shops or going out for the evening at this time.’

Detec­tives are urg­ing any wit­ness­es, peo­ple who may have CCTV or dri­vers with dash­cam footage of the inci­dent to get in touch.

Mr Mulc­ahy said: ‘We are in the very ear­ly stages of our inves­ti­ga­tion, but this is cur­rent­ly being treat­ed as a domes­tic assault in which the sus­pect and vic­tim knew each oth­er, and we are not look­ing for any­one else in con­nec­tion with it.’

He added: ‘We treat all reports of domes­tic abuse extreme­ly seri­ous­ly, tar­get­ing offend­ers and sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble vic­tims all year round.

‘If you are a vic­tim of domes­tic abuse or believe a neigh­bour or some­one you know is, please let us know so that we can inves­ti­gate and take action.’