'I saw the look in his eyes': Hero officers open up about moment they came face-to-face with Southport killer

Sergeant Greg Gillespie, 42, PC Luke Holden, 31, and PCSO Tim Parry, 32, were the first officers to arrive at the scene after Axel Rudakubana launched his vile attack on the dance class.

Speaking publically for the first time since the murders, Sgt Gillespie said: "There was maybe 20 or 25 adults and all of them were looking at me, all of them have this look of terror and fear, panic on their faces and I knew whatever it was we were turning up to was really, really bad."

Speaking to Sky News, Sgt Gillespie revealed he arrived at the scene around 30 seconds before his colleagues.

Read more: Father of girl injured in Southport attack says she was stabbed by ‘coward’

As he pulled up to the scene, PC Holden says he saw a large puddle of blood before Sgt Gillespie simply asked him “are you ready.”

Tim Parry, who unlike his colleagues was not armed with a baton or pepper spray, went to the back of building to prevent anyone from entering.

He told Sky: "It was a horrific scene to really go into because I was so unprepared with the equipment I had."

Describing the moment he saw Rudakubana, covered in blood and knife in hand, Sgt Gillespie said: "I saw him, made eye contact with him, saw his facial expression, saw his body language and the way he moved himself into a position at the top of the stairs, showing us he had a knife.

"He was fronting us, like he was saying, 'I've got a knife, what are you going to do about it?'

"And I think the second he realised he was looking at two people who weren't scared of him, who were going to attack him, all that bravery that he must have summoned up to attack defenceless children, he lost that straightaway, and he threw down the knife."

Axel Rudakubana murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, when he carried out a frenzied knife attack on a Taylor Swift dance class last summer.

The father of one of the girls who survived the attack, referred to as C3 during the hearing to protect her identity, told the hearing at Liverpool Town Hall it was “patently clear that lessons need to be learned from what happened, and processes need to be changed”.

Sitting beside the girl’s mother in the witness box, he said: “Our nine-year-old daughter was stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see.

“Although she didn’t know what was happening — she knew she had to run. ”He said they had since seen CCTV footage of her running from the building on Hart Street, looking “scared, confused and pained” and hiding behind a parked car, before jumping to “relative safety” through an open car door.

He added: “We remain eternally grateful that we were lucky that day, and that the skill of the paramedics, surgeons and medical staff meant we got our little girl back.”

Describing his daughter as his “hero”, the father said she remained “the positive, caring, funny, enthusiastic, courageous girl she always was”.

He said: “She wears her scars with a dignity and defiance that is remarkable.”