Teenager held over Islington schoolboy's murder

LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) A 15-year-old boy has been arrested by police investigating the fatal stabbing of a schoolboy in north London.

Scotland Yard said officers had arrested the youth in connection with the murder of 14-year-old Martin Dinnegan, who died outside a chip shop in Islington on Tuesday evening, a few hundred yards from his home.

The schoolboy's death was the latest in a spate of knife and gun murders of teenagers in London this month.

Police said they arrested the suspect on Wednesday night.

Dinnegan's mother Lorraine said her son had been killed after looking ''the wrong way'' at a gang of up to 20 youths.

''He's a lovely boy, he doesn't deserve this, nobody deserves this,'' newspapers quoted her as saying.

''He was a very popular boy and did very well in school.'' His father James said penalties for carrying knives should be tougher.

''Politicians have got to do more,'' he said. ''There are gangs roaming the streets all night.'' Danny Coyle, deputy head of Dinnegan's school St Aloysius College, told the Daily Telegraph ''Martin was well-behaved and got on well with all the pupils and teachers.'' ''He was decent, had a good future and had done nothing wrong.'' Dinnegan's violent death follows that of 16-year-old Ben Hitchcock, who was fatally stabbed on Saturday in Beckenham in a fight involving a group of youths who had tried to gatecrash a party.

Annaka Pinto, 17, was shot dead in the early hours of Saturday during a fight in a bar in Tottenham, north London.

REUTERS SM PM1620