Police Scotland are yet to identify the suspect, who is said to have tried to ransack a shop in Edinburgh armed with knives – with pictures showing the massive armed response
The suspect in a reported mass stabbing is holed up in the top floor of a flat complex, police believe, forcing investigators to keep hunt him down with a drone.
Armed police have shut down a neighbourhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, today as they respond to reports of a “man with a bladed weapon”. Two people have been hospitalised following a reported mass stabbing incident in the city, and officers have tracked down the suspect believed to have been involved to a local tower block.
Dramatic new photographs have captured the massive police presence at the scene, and the high-tech methods officers are using to track down the suspect – who was pictured wielding two knives earlier today.
READ MORE: Edinburgh nurseries and schools locked down after knifeman ‘tried to get in’READ MORE: Edinburgh Calder LIVE: Sighthill locals told ‘stay inside’ after ‘mass stabbing’
Police Scotland, which has a massive presence at the building in Calder, to Edinburgh’s west, were seen deploying a drone earlier this afternoon, which shot up to the top floor. The drone has granted the service a bird’s eye view of the Cobbinshaw House complex, and will allow officers to potentially pinpoint the suspect’s location.
Locals speaking after police arrived today said they have never experienced this type of commotion in the area, among them Cobbinshaw resident Mary Todd.
She said she could hear the man police are hinting from the tower block before she left the building through its back door with her daughter. The man was also briefly spotted armed with a knife and emerging from a window at the top of the block while the siege continued.
Local residents have claimed the man, while armed, had stormed into and ransacked a local shop before attempting to get into a school and chasing workers with a knife. Abigail Clegg said he had “tried to get into the school, the nursery” before he was chased away.
She added: “He [then] went into the shop. He ransacked the shop, the shop’s a mess. He chased the people that work in the shop with a knife.”
Several schools and nurseries were forced to lock down this morning after the man tried to get in, police said, and locals were subsequently urged to stay at home. Police said in a statement that members of the public have been asked to avoid the area while police continue to operate.
A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “The public is being advised to avoid the Calder area of Edinburgh following reports of a man with a bladed weapon. Police, including firearms officers, are in attendance.”
