Age: 17
Sex: female
Date: 2 Apr 2018
Place: Charlgrove Road, Tottenham, London
Tanesha Melbourne-Blake was shot in Charlgrove Road, Tottenham, on Sunday 2 April 2018.
She was shot by a gunman from a silver Vauxhall Meriva people carrier car that drove by at about 9.35pm. The police said that they thought that there had been two people in the car at the time of the murder. They also said that they thought that three shots were fired, the one that killed Tanesha Melbourne-Blake and two others that landed in the street.
Tanesha Melbourne-Blake died at the scene.
The gunman was described as a black male with a slit in his eyebrow. He had been wearing black clothing including black gloves.
Tanesha Melbourne-Blake had been standing in the street with a number of other people and the police thought that she was an innocent victim of a gang turf war between local gangs, noting that she had no gang connections.
It was noted that the gun that was used to kill her was later traced after it was used in the murder of Joseph Williams-Torres who was shot a month earlier. However, it was stated that the two murders were not connected and that the gun had been out for hire in the area from at least May 2017, about a year. The gun was found on 19 May 2018, six weeks after Tanesha Melbourne-Blake was killed by a member of the public in Tudor Close in Highgate wrapped in a towel inside a bag and forensic tests on the bullets from both cases found that they had been fired from the same gun. The police said that they also knew that the gun had been used in three other crimes.
The gun was a Czech-made Browning handgun but had its serial number removed.
The police said, 'We know that it was used on five occasions at least. Four of which were in east London and one in north London, and out of those two innocent members of the public have lost their lives'.
The occasions the gun was known to have been used are:
The police said that they thought that after the gun was used to kill Joseph Williams-Torres that it had been passed on to another gang.
Three youths were convicted of the murder of Joseph Williams-Torres in December 2019. They had shot Joseph Williams-Torres in a gang war as he sat in a van in Walthamstow on 14 March 2018 but his murder was described as a case of mistaken identity as he was mistaken for someone else. His murder was about a month before Tanesha Melbourne-Blake's murder.
Tanesha Melbourne-Blake had been with friends in the street at the time when multiple shots were fired from the Vauxhall Meriva car. The car was later found burnt out at Ludgrove Court on Fordham Road in Barnet five days later on 7 April 2018. Its registration number had been KS56 NKG and it had had blacked out rear windows. The police said that they knew that the car had been parked under Martlesham House on the Broadwater Farm Estate between Thursday 22 March and Sunday 25 March 2018 but didn’t know where it was kept or used between 25 March and the day of the murder on 2 April 2018. The police further noted that they thought that the car had been parked somewhere else between 3 April and the day it was found burnt out on 7 April.
Six people were arrested during the investigation but released under investigation.
Tanesha Melbourne-Blake had been a pupil at Haringey Sixth form College and had regularly attended Bruce Grove Youth Space where she was volunteering to be a mentor.
She was noted for having posted an Instagram video of herself whilst sat in the back of a car just an hour before she was shot.
