In a place the size of the Northern Territory, two fatal stabbings in a month is a rare occurrence.
Yet earlier this year, the NT community was rocked by two cases just weeks apart.
On March 19, 20-year-old Declan Laverty died after being stabbed at the Darwin bottle shop where he worked during an alleged robbery.
Less than a month later, on April 14, a 51-year-old woman died after being stabbed in the Darwin CBD on a busy Friday night, in what police described as a "domestic-related" incident.
In the wake of the recent deaths and a number of other knife-related incidents, NT authorities have acknowledged offences involving edged weapons are a growing problem.
"We know over the past few years we've seen an increase in presentation of edged weapons or use in violent crime types," then police deputy commissioner Michael Murphy said.
NT Police Minister Kate Worden has also said the issue has become more serious over the last six months.
Heightened anxiety as knife crimes make headlines
Mr Laverty and the 51-year-old woman's deaths are not the only incidents involving knives and other edged weapons in the NT this year.
Days after Mr Laverty's death there were a spate of robberies involving knives and axes at multiple bottle shops near Darwin on the same night.
Service stations have been held up with up with assailants carrying knives, machetes and spears.
Two people were stabbed in a Darwin shopping centre car park, and a teenage boy was allegedly struck in the chest with a pair of scissors during a brawl in the same area last week.
Neighbourhood Watch NT chief executive Chris Brack said locals were becoming more concerned about knife crime, and attendance at personal safety and de-escalation workshops it co-runs has jumped.
"We've noticed an increase in anxiety in the community around edged weapons," Mr Brack said.
"Particularly since the death of Declan Laverty, but even for I'd say a couple of months before that, the general anxiety around particularly edged weapons offences is on the increase."
Looking for solutions at home and abroad
With a review of police powers and other measures already underway, the NT government has said it is looking to places like London — where knife crime has long been a serious problem — for solutions.
The police minister has acknowledged the government is looking at the 2017 London Knife Crime Strategy for ideas on how to tackle the issue.
"We are not London, but we are looking at the mechanisms and the sort of responses that they did within that," Ms Worden said.
Dr Gately said the strategy was worth exploring because it was "two-pronged".
Part of the approach is to focus on getting larges knives off the streets, and the other is to educate young people about the serious consequences of wielding a knife and using it in the commission of a crime.
At the same time, another jurisdiction in Australia is also working to crack down on knife-related offending.
Queensland has recently introduced laws allowing police to use handheld metal detectors to search people for knives in night spots in an expansion of a trial started on the Gold Coast in 2021.
Griffith Criminology Institute director Janet Ransley said Queensland has the widest-ranging approach to knife crime in Australia at the moment, and there could be lessons for other jurisdictions.
"This kind of strategy can be useful to increase detection, but if it's used in a targeted way where we know there is in fact a problem of knives being carried, it shows that this should be a targeted approach rather than a one-size-fits-all approach," she said.
The experts said public education campaigns, expanding CCTV and securing access to knives in businesses and homes were other ways to help reduce offending.
In a statement, Ms Worden said the NT government "often looks at how issues have been addressed in other jurisdictions to see if solutions which have been introduced would be suitable in the NT. The use of edged weapons is no different".
She noted the government had already introduced a presumption against bail for edged weapon offences.
What drives this type of crime?
Natalie Gately, a criminologist at Edith Cowan University, said knife crime was mainly driven by disadvantage such as poverty, homelessness and substance abuse.
She said at the moment, those issues were being exacerbated in Australia by the rising cost of living.
Dr Gately said edged weapons can rapidly escalate situations, even when a person carrying one does not intend to use it.
"Once you introduce a sharp implement, once you introduce a weapon, you increase the amount of damage that can be done," she said.
"You're also much more likely for someone to react, by grabbing their own kitchen knife, and then we've got major problems with both people then armed."
Knife offences still not a major crime type
Despite the trend authorities have noted in the territory, Dr Gately said offences involving knives were not a major crime type in Australia compared to most other countries, and statistics nation-wide were relatively steady.
She said while young people and gangs were responsible for some edged weapons offending, most in Australia was happening in the context of domestic violence.
"These types of knife crimes, when they happen they're very shocking, and you can't diminish the impact on someone's life who's been stabbed or who's done the stabbing. [But] in the whole scheme of things they're relatively low on the radar," Dr Gately said.
"The problem with any type of [crime] where you've got a weapon is when they do become an issue, they're a lot more chance to have serious damage."
