FOI 2519569 - Homicide victims under 16
Your Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information relating to girls and boys aged 16 and under who were homicide victims recorded by your force between 1 January 2018 and the most recent date available in 2026.
Please provide annual totals for:
- Girls aged 16 and under killed, broken down by:
- suspect sex (male/female/unknown)
- relationship between victim and suspect, where recorded
- broad cause or method of killing
- Boys aged 16 and under killed, broken down by:
- suspect sex (male/female/unknown)
- relationship between victim and suspect, where recorded
- broad cause or method of killing
For relationship categories, where recorded, please use broad groupings such as:
- Parent
- Step-parent
- Family member
- Acquaintance
- Stranger
- Unknown / not recorded
For cause/method categories, where recorded, please use broad groupings such as:
- Sharp instrument
- Blunt force
- Strangulation/suffocation
- Shooting
- Neglect
- Other
- Unknown
Please also separately identify:
- the number of girls aged 16 and under killed by a male
Freedom of Information Act 2000
This request is being handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I can confirm that Durham Constabulary holds some of the information you requested. For the timeframe of the request, there are years in which no homicides were recorded in line with your request criteria, as such for those years there is no information held. I have provided the yearly breakdown below:
2018 - 0
2019 - 0
2020 - 0
2021 - 0
2022 - 2
2023 - 0
2024 - 2
2025 - 0
2026 - 0
Furthermore, one of the homicides in 2022 and one in 2024 had a female victim under the age of 16 years with the offender being male.
I have considered the request in full and I am not obliged by statute to provide any further information relevant to your request by virtue of the following exemption:
Section 21(1) - Information reasonably accessible by other means
Section 21 is an absolute class-based exemption which does not require the harm to be articulated nor the public interest to be considered, however, on this occasion I have provided links to news articles which contains the requested information:
Mother jailed for life for murder of her son | Durham Constabulary
Michael Daymond jailed for life for Maya Chappell murder - BBC News
Man found guilty of one-year-old boy's murder | Durham Constabulary
Man found guilty of murdering Scarlett Vickers | Durham Constabulary
This response therefore acts as a refusal notice under section 17 of the FoIA.