By BRIDGET COOK
POLICE have denied racial tension in the community, as they charged a teenager and arrested others following the stabbing of Ben Phillips, 14, in Cranbourne on Saturday night.
Police yesterday charged a 15-year-old boy from Maidstone with intentionally causing serious injury and other assault-related offences.
Two 14-year-old boys, from Endeavour Hills and Dandenong North, and a Patterson Lakes boy, 15, were also arrested on Tuesday and have all been released.
They are expected to be charged on summons, police said.
The charges come after Ben, from Narre Warren, was assaulted and stabbed in Clarendon Street, Cranbourne, while walking a friend home from a party about 10pm on Saturday.
The teenager suffered lacerations to his torso and was taken to the Royal Children’s Hospital suffering critical injuries.
His condition has since improved and he is now in a serious but stable condition.
His mother Leanne Phillips spoke to 3AW on Monday and supported calls for a street curfew on children.
“It needs to stop. Next time it might be someone else’s kid and they mightn’t survive,” she told the station.
“It is bad. We’re meant to be the lucky country.
“This ain’t the lucky country. You could (once) walk the streets, now you can’t.”
Ms Phillips also called for tougher laws on the sale of knives and said Ben’s father recently challenged staff at a Melbourne market about the sale of knives.
Metro media outlets have claimed the incident has caused tension in the Cranbourne community and that police were concerned.
The claims came after a relative of the victim allegedly said on social media that another incident would “mean war” and that Saturday night had got “all of Cranny on alert”.
However Casey CIU Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Rollo said that was not the case.
“This was not racially motivated and we don’t believe there’s racial tension in the community,” he said.
“This was a one-off incident from the party and not an ongoing issue between two groups.”
Lead investigator Detective Sergeant Darron Hedge reiterated that, and on Monday, urged the community not “to take matters into their own hands”.
“We want the community to understand this is not an ongoing issue between groups of people,” he said.
“It was also not racially motivated.”
