In the space of just four hours, three serious crimes were played out on the streets of Merseyside on Friday night.
At around 7.30pm, a fish and chip shop on Marian Square in Netherton, was entering one of its busiest hours, when a teenager was shot at as he stood outside.
Aged just 17, up to two bullets were fired at the boy as he made his way past Bungalow Fish Bar, both mercifully missing him, with locals reporting one of them hitting the fast-food outlet behind him .
The next day, detectives had managed to locate the youth who was the supposed target for the firearms discharge.
Officers had spoken to him, and somewhat depressingly, the 17-year-old was choosing to blank police with silence, refusing to cooperate with the investigation - a tactic which is becoming increasingly familiar with those who become embroiled in the potentially-deadly tit-for-tat shootings which still blight Merseyside.
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When the ECHO contacted Bungalow Fish Bar on Saturday afternoon, staff were reluctant to divulge much, if any details, merely stating the chippy was entering one of its busiest spells, and how it was business as usual.
Back to Friday, and fast forward two hours, when, at 9.30pm, it was a crime involving a knife, not a gun, which was dominating local headlines.
Initially, it appeared unclear how and where an 18-year-old had come by his injuries, with passers-by coming across the teen at a taxi rank on Mill Lane, in West Derby Village.
It was only the following day, on Saturday, that it emerged the venue for the brutal slashing was the pub toilets of the busy Sefton Arms.
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The victim had staggered from the pub into the street where a handful of Good Samaritans had come to his aid, desperately trying to stop the flow of blood.
A Merseyside Police spokesman was to soon offer the update that the victim had been knifed in the stomach and buttocks.
A large pool of blood on the street, outside the Sefton Arms, served as a bloody reminder of the violence that had taken place 24 hours earlier.
It was another sign of the scourge of knife crime in our city, and with the pub toilets described as the worrying location for this latest attack, another venue where a bladed weapon had been successfully smuggled inside a licensed premises.
On Saturday morning, police said the victim was refusing to co-operate, although that wouldn't prevent police doing their best to carry out an investigation.
The ECHO contacted the Sefton Arms this evening, but a man identifying himself as the manager would only say that police had "instructed all staff to say nothing" if the media came calling, asking questions.
That wasn't an end to the knife crime on a chock-a-block Friday night, sadly, with perhaps the most violent of all the incidents being played out in Fingerpost in St Helens.
Terrified screams of 'he's dying' after a gang storm home and knife occupant in back and stomach
It was late, at 11.30pm, when there was the unusual sound of a knock at the door at one house on Wood Street.
Not everybody would answer at such late an hour, but a 53-year-old did open the door, only to be greeted by three masked men, all dressed in dark clothing and balaclavas, who stormed the property, armed with at least one knife, maybe more.
A man, 43, seemed to be the main target for the attack, with him sustaining stab wounds to his stomach, back and chest.
During the forthcoming hours, he required emergency surgery and his condition was described as "stable" by police the following day.
A 19-year-old man had been upstairs at the time of the raid, who suffered a cut to his shin as he ran downstairs, trying to intervene.
A woman, said to live at the address, was struck to the face in the ensuing chaos.
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Along Wood Street, the shocking screams of a female, crying, "He's dying!" were heard to punctuate the night air as the clock ticked on towards midnight.
Six hours, three different local authority areas - Liverpool, Sefton and St Helens - and a trio of exceptionally dangerous crimes involving both knives and a gun.
And, despite the best efforts of our investigating police forces, a lack of any arrests to accompany all three.
