Woman charged after Covent Garden scissors stabbings, four men treated and discharged after Endell Street attack, air ambulance lands in Trafalgar Square during lunchtime rush

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standard.co.uk

A woman has been charged after four men were stabbed in the back with a pair of scissors on a busy lunchtime street in Covent Garden, central London, according to the Evening Standard. Police said they were flagged down on Endell Street shortly after midday, prompting an emergency response that included an air ambulance helicopter landing in Trafalgar Square.

The defendant, Stella Gollovena, 47, faces four counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and one count of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place, the Standard reports. The weapon is described as a pair of scissors, also referred to as shears. She is of no fixed address and was remanded in custody following a first court appearance, with a further hearing scheduled at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

The immediate facts are straightforward—four victims, a single suspect, a weapon more associated with a household drawer than street violence—but the episode illustrates how quickly a tourist-heavy district can become a trauma-scene. Endell Street sits amid theatres, restaurants and bars; the same density that makes the area commercially valuable also compresses response times, crowd control, and public reassurance into a narrow window. The London Ambulance Service treated four patients at the scene and transported all of them to a major trauma centre by road as a priority, while police pursued and Tasered the suspect.

The Standard says the men’s injuries were not deemed life-threatening or life-changing and that they have since been discharged from hospital. That outcome, however, depends on a chain of capacity that is often invisible until it is tested: rapid triage, available ambulances, clear routes through central London, and hospital teams able to absorb sudden arrivals without displacing other emergencies.

The case also shows how urban disorder can be processed into a narrow legal frame. A fifth person reportedly claimed to have been stabbed but did not provide a statement to police, leaving the public record to be shaped by the victims who stayed in the system and the charges that can be proved.

On Wednesday afternoon, while tourists crossed Trafalgar Square, an air ambulance landed nearby because four men had been stabbed with scissors a short walk away.