Why is what’s happening in Leicester secret?

[GrandmaMazur]

I just saw a news alert about a very serious incident that happened last night in Leicester and the area is cordoned off with a heavy police presence. But there are no details available.

I don’t remember seeing a news story like this before where nothing about the actual incident is reported. Does this happen regularly and I’ve not noticed or is this quite unusual?

I hope it’s nothing too awful.

I think you should look up the definition of prurient.

As to the rest of what you’re saying, that’s quite a leap. To reiterate, I wasn’t demanding information. I asked a question which some people have given sensible answers to.

It seems like this was a tragic incident and I can’t imagine how awful it must feel to lose a loved one in this way.

Oh. Good catch.

It pretty obvious it's because the incident took place at or close to an educational campus whereby there are a lot of young people in a confined space.

It is reported in the same way if something happens on a school premises while the incident is 'live'

From previous professional experience, the journalists often know the details. Even if the police haven't told them. No idea how they find out! Sometimes they delay publishing all the facts as requested by police, or other relevant organisations, to due to family notification, security issues, or many more things that could be of detriment to publicly announce straight away. Its not an information ban, just a courtesy delay.

Yes I do know what I saw (and it's still there too) and I know when I saw it, mainly because the report gives the time of publication so yes, you are wrong. You seem an all round suspicious person. Why would I, or anyone, make it up? If you were so desperate for more information, why didn't you look it up yourself instead of relying on whatever news service you were using? I'll repeat it was published at 7.15 this morning so the information was available for nearly 4 hours before you posted.

Of course, in that case the racists got the consolation prize of the perpetrator being black, which to them is "not proper British anyway".

I had the same thought, I live in Leicester. We saw the news breaking last night and up until this morning it was reported as a serious incident with a statement from the university but no further information. I understand not releasing names but usually the news would be “fatality in city centre stabbing” etc but this did not state a stabbing atall which is very unusual. There has been numerous city centre stabbings which have not had this much coverage. It did seem like a very unusual way of breaking news with no news. Not that this isn’t an awful crime but given how often it happens it was made out to be something worse (apologies I was struggling how to word this, I do understand the severity that a young man has lost his life)

There was a stabbing on Granby street a couple of weeks ago and reported virtually straight away. I agree this is all very odd.

The cordoned off area was quite large aswell opposed to immediate area which caused a significant route to the cities main hospital being blocked off, I haven’t seen anything like this for the previous stabbings in the city centre

They don’t give details when there is uncertainty about what happened. The Nottingham tragedy, the city centre was closed down and referred to as an incident for hours and hours.

They had 3 scenes, I believe, and initially it wasn’t clear what type of situation it was. For example you might not know how serious the incident and injuries, if the assailant acted alone, whether there was more than one victim, more than one crime. If someone punches someone, then pulls a knife on someone else, and a fourth person gets involved in an attempt to stop it, police won’t initially know who’s the assailant and who are the victims.

Thank you. That does make sense.

BBC informed by police at about 1130.

Police have arrested 18 year old.male.for stabbing 20 year old male who has sadly lost his life he was a university student at de Montfort university of Leicester ! His poor family 😔 x

I saw the “serious incident” report this morning. There may have been other altercations or incidents that they needed to rule out as being related.

Thoughts with his family and friends.

Well, I hope you avoid all media and news then given 99% of it is totally irrelevant to the reader. We must all be “ghouls”.

The Leicester Mercury live coverage is also still up. They added the information about it being a stabbing at 1149.

PP's various suggestions about the cause of the eighteen hour delay between the incident and releasing the information all seem plausible to me. My theory is that such delays are common, but the press don't normally notice something happened until police tell them: this was noticed because of the road closures and resulting traffic jams.

It's been reported as a stabbing on BBC.co.uksince at least 7.15 this morning

My BBC news didn’t confirm the stabbing until after 11..

Nor did mine.

Prurient doesn't always mean a sexual interest. Eg, from the OED:

Prurient (adj)

1. Exhibiting or characterized by excessive or inappropriate desire or interest; overly curious.

The page posted at 0715 is static, and has been updated multiple times since. It's now reporting the suspect's arrest, so I expect they'll leave it there and start a new page for the charge.

It is a really busy area and happened at 5pm as multiple workers would have been passing through the area finishing work at the hospital etc. Social media was posting numerous eye witness accounts that someone had been stabbed, multiple people tried to help. I was scouring all news reports as soon as the news broke because this is my main route to work and I needed to know if roads were going to be open to get to work this morning. Sorry but I still find the lack of information until 11am this morning odd.

Once again, this is bbc.co.uk, the News section and they posted at 7.15 this morning with the headline Murder arrest after student stabbed near campus. This article has been added to all day.
If you don't believe me, it's there to look at, still with that time on it. What's your BBC news source?

Yes agreed. I mean that whole area and the Bede park area is just so bad and there have been so many incidents recently that that would make sense.

I wish they wouldn't say "don't speculate"