A man almost died after being lured to East London to buy a car listed in a phony advertisement on the Gumtree listings website.
Police described yesterday how two black men had waylaid the 42-year-old victim in North Street, Barking, in the middle of the afternoon on July 30, after drawing him to the area with the fake ad for a Volkswagen Golf.
Witnesses had seen the man being punched, beaten and stabbed as his attackers, who appeared to be in their 20s, wrested a bag from him containing about £5,000 in cash.
He was treated at the scene by paramedics from an air ambulance before being transferred to the Royal London Hospital for life-saving surgery.
Detective Chief Inspector Ellie O’Connor, of Barking CID, said: “They stabbed him four times in the chest, puncturing his lung.
“The paramedics basically ended up doing open-heart surgery in the street to save him.
“This was a brutal attack on an innocent man who was responding to an online advertisement in good faith."
She appealed for anyone who witnessed this attack or who knew anything about it to come forward.
“This happened on a busy cut-through on a summer’s day. There must be other people who saw this incident.
“Maybe they didn’t realise what they were seeing. If anyone knows anything about this, I would ask them to look to their conscience.”
