Sussex Police say a boy of 13 was stabbed on Grand Parade at 5.10pm on Sunday and airlifted to hospital. Police are trying to trace a group who left the scene.
A 13-year-old boy was airlifted to hospital on Sunday afternoon after being injured on Eastbourne seafront. Sussex Police say his injury was consistent with a stabbing.
The force issued a witness appeal at 7.25pm on 20 September. It says officers are investigating a report of a serious assault near the seafront at about 5.10pm that day.
What the force has said
The appeal is short, and it is the only account Sussex Police have published. In full, the force says:
- the report was of a serious assault near Eastbourne seafront at about 5.10pm on 20 September
- a boy aged 13 “had sustained an injury consistent with a stabbing, and has been airlifted to hospital”
- the incident happened in Grand Parade near the junctions with Elms Avenue and Cavendish Place
- “a group of young people were leaving the scene and work is ongoing to locate them”
- there will be an increased police presence in the area “while enquiries are completed and to provide reassurance”
The force has not released the boy’s condition, has not said anyone has been arrested, and has not described anyone it is looking for. Nothing beyond the statement above has been confirmed by Sussex Police, and we are not reporting anything that has not.
Where it happened
Grand Parade is the seafront road running north-east from the bandstand towards the pier. The junctions the force names, Elms Avenue and Cavendish Place, meet it within about 60 metres of each other, roughly 40 metres short of the shore entrance to Eastbourne Pier and about 390 metres along the front from the bandstand.
That is the pier approach, where the seafront hotels and the entrance to the pier face each other across the road. The incident happened at teatime on a Sunday in September.
What police are asking for
Sussex Police want to hear from anyone who saw what happened, and from anyone who has CCTV, mobile phone or dashcam footage from Grand Parade around 5.10pm on Sunday.
Reports can be made through the Sussex Police website or on 101. The reference to quote is serial 1096 of 20.09. Dashcam footage is worth checking even if you only drove past: the seafront road carries through traffic, and the force has asked for it specifically.
What the record shows about this stretch
Recorded crime on Grand Parade itself is rare. Home Office street-level data published at police.uk logs 14 crimes on or near Grand Parade in the 12 months to July 2026, the latest month available. Five were violence and sexual offences and one was possession of weapons. The 12 months before that produced the same total, 14, with two violent offences.
Across the wider central Eastbourne area, meaning everything within a mile of the scene, the picture is busier and slightly worse than a year ago:
- 6,738 crimes of all kinds in the 12 months to July 2026, up from 6,383 the year before
- 2,205 violence and sexual offences, up from 2,156
- 91 possession of weapons offences, up from 83, an average of between seven and eight a month
- 96 robberies, against 94
July 2026 was the heaviest single month for violence and sexual offences in the two years of data, with 234 recorded. Two caveats matter. Street-level data is mapped to anonymised points near an incident rather than to an exact address, so figures for a named road are indicative. And the data runs only to July, so it does not include Sunday’s incident, which will appear in the published figures later in the autumn.
What it means for you
If you were on the seafront between the bandstand and the pier on Sunday afternoon, the force wants to hear from you, whether or not you think you saw anything relevant. Quote serial 1096 of 20.09.
Expect more officers than usual around Grand Parade and the pier approach for the next few days. Sussex Police say that presence is there while enquiries continue and to reassure people, not because of a fresh incident. The force has not announced any road closure on the seafront; any that is put in place would show on our Eastbourne roadworks and travel page.
We will update this page as Sussex Police release more. We do not report arrests, names or court proceedings beyond what the force itself publishes, and we will not publish material circulating on social media.
Sources: Sussex Police witness appeal, 20 September 2026; police.uk street-level crime data for the 24 months to July 2026, Open Government Licence; street and coastline geometry from OpenStreetMap contributors.
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