A 14-year-old ‘known gang member’ has been arrested over the alleged abduction of a high school student.
The police arrested the Frankston South boy in Frankston and said the teen was assisting them with their inquiries.
Inspector Scott Dwyer alleged the Frankston boy was the principal offender in Monday’s abduction.
‘We have identified all those persons we believe responsible for that attack and their arrests are imminent,’ he said.
‘In the next couple of hours, there will be further arrests and then further still over the next coming days.’
Year 9 Glen Eira College student Benjamin (pictured) remains in a serious but stable condition after being abducted by thugs while walking home from school
Year 9 student Benjamin, 14, was bundled into a dark grey Volkswagen Tiguan moments after stepping out of the gates of Glen Eira College in Glen Huntly, in south-east Melbourne, on Monday afternoon.
The ‘bright’ and ‘talented’ student was left with ‘life-altering’ injuries after being abducted while walking home from school and attacked by a gang of knife-wielding thugs who pushed him out of their moving car.
Inside the vehicle, he was robbed of his mobile phone and other belongings and attacked before he was thrown from the moving car several hundred metres up the road.
Inspector Dwyer alleged the offenders had targeted multiple boys.
‘I want to reassure our community, especially the mums and dads, the kids are safe to walk to school,’ he said.
He said the police had dispatched extra patrols to key locations to give parents comfort and deter any potential crime.
Inspector Dwyer said youth crime, classified between the ages of 10-24, was lower than 2020 pre-Covid levels, though he said there had been an uptick in the 10-17 age range.
Pictured: Emergency services at the scene after Benjamin was found with critical injuries on Monday
He said there are 598 youth gang members in Victoria from 44 gangs and alleged the boy arrested today belonged to one of those gangs.
‘That is significantly down on where we were three years ago, where there were 747,’ he said.
He said the police were ‘dealing’ with youth crime in the state. ‘We don’t want people to be alarmed … We are in there with them.’
He said it was too soon to say schools were being targeted for armed robberies.
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, Inspector Dwyer told radio station 3AW ‘We had further victims come forward.
‘There have been some silent victims, they have suffered like this other boy, maybe not to the level of injuries he has, but they have not reported to their parents or police.’
He said Benjamin has suffered ‘life-altering’ injuries and severe mental trauma.
The investigation has broadened to consider if the attack was linked to a similar incident just ten minutes Benjamin’s abduction.
In that incident, four teenagers were robbed by two machete-wielding offenders on Kambrook Road, in nearby Caulfield, at about 3.25pm on Monday.
Alarmingly, five other schools across Melbourne’s east have reported students being targeted by thieves in similar incidents over the past month – although police believe they are unrelated to the incidents on Monday.
Several students from Xavier College were targeted last week, while a pupil from Scotch College was robbed by three men on August 7, 9News reported.
Just three days before the attack on Benjamin, a student at Elwood College was approached by a woman in an SUV who tried to take his mobile phone, according to the Herald Sun.
Similar reports have also emerged from students from Carey Grammar, Sacre Coeur and St Bede’s College.
Police have increased patrols across the region, with Inspector Dwyer describing the attacks as ‘sickening’.
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