Course they should investigate it, something like this I imagine:
Police: "Ok Mr Philpotts, what happened?"
Mr Philpotts: "I was attacked by these five youths as they were vandalising my van outside my home and beating my son. I fought them off with my letter opener which I keep near the front door and unfortunately during the scuffle one of them got stabbed five times"
Police: "I see, well we know where you live, we'll be in touch when we need your testimony in court against these five ruffians".
You know, maybe the police could think about actual justice a bit before just going for the easy arrest to meet their targets.
Here's a thought, why not investigate the facts before going around announcing you suspect people of attempted murder. The guy in the article wasn't a flight risk, why arrest him?
Scorza, you have NO concept of criminal procedure in the UK
Yes, looking at the facts from the comfort of the following day and also from the comfort of your armchair its easier to come to a conclusion. When 2 cops turn up to a scene where there are 8 ppl involved (5 neds and the 3 family members) all of whom are fighting or injured parties its a bit different.
These cops have to assess these following facts very very quickly -
1. numerous bodies involved in a stand-up fight.
2. Injured parties already there and in VERY serious conditions.
3. "witnesses" from both sides stating whats happened biased to their own side.
So they have 2 ppl severly injured (the son-in-law and the stab victim) and you have someone identified (inluding self incrimination as he admitted it) as stabbing someone NUMEROUS times.
The cops did the correct thing. He is arrested and then questioned. Beleive it or not, the cops do him a favour here as he has more rights as an arrested person than if he isn't.
He also states that the cops were decent to him and he had no complaints to them indicating that they DID figure out what had happened but do YOU want to be that cop that makes the decision to release someone thats just stabbed someone else multiple times ??
It is NOT the police's decision whether he should be prosecuted or not but I tell you what, if the CPS found out that someone had been stabbed multiple times and the police "let the guy go" they would rip the police a new one....