Southport inquiry blames killer's parents for failing to prevent attack
- Officials passed the buck over killer’s fixation with violence
- Multiple warning signs over his ‘capacity for fatal violence’ were missed or downgraded
- Killer developed ‘longstanding fixation with violence and disturbing online material’
- His parents ‘failed to report crucial information’ and ‘let him have knives and weapons’ delivered to home
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The murder of three young girls at a dance workshop in Southport "could have been prevented", a chilling report into the killings which devastated the entire nation revealed today.
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Elsie Stancombe, seven, and six-year-old Bebe King along with nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, were murdered by Axel Rudakubana (AR) at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 2024.
The killer, then 17, also attempted to murder eight other children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as well as class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
The first phase of the inquiry into the attack has revealed the numerous failings by multiple agencies - and pointed the finger at Rudakubana's parents who could have "almost certainly" stopped it from happening.
Sir Adrian Fulford, Chair of the Southport Inquiry, said: "This terrible event could have been - and should have been - prevented.
"Today is in recognition of Elsie, Bebe and Alice, of those who were physically and psychologically injured, and to the families whose lives have been irreparably changed."
Read more: Southport survivor pleads for round-ended kitchen knives to become norm
Among the key findings was "serious parental failures" by Rudakubana's parents who "did not provide boundaries, permitted knives and weapons to be delivered to the home, and failed to report crucial information in the days leading up to the attack."
The killer’s father, Alphonse, and mother Laetitia Muzayire, had failed to stand up to their son or set boundaries and though Sir Adrian recognised they had struggled to deal with him, they also bore “considerable blame”.
He added: “However, they had knowledge that he had purchased some weapons, and they knew he had tried to leave the house to carry out some form of attack at his old school just one week prior to the fatal attack, when there was a real risk that he was armed with a weapon.
“They also knew of empty knife packaging once the perpetrator left the family home on the day of the fatal attack.”
The inquiry confirmed that the 17-year-old killer had "developed a longstanding fixation with violence, fuelled by unsupervised access to disturbing online material and patterns of behaviour that were known to multiple agencies."
Sir Adrian added: "AR’s trajectory towards grave violence was signposted repeatedly and unambiguously. Yet the systems and agencies responsible for safeguarding the public did not act with the cohesion, urgency or clarity required.
"If the full extent of AR’s family’s concerns had been shared with authorities in late July 2024 – including on the day of the attack – it is almost certain this tragedy would have been prevented."
Sir Adrian said Rudakubana had “clearly revealed the extreme danger that he presented to others” more than four years before his attack, when he went to his former school, the Range High School in Formby, armed with a kitchen knife and a hockey stick and attacked a student.
The inquiry chairman said the incident in December 2019, for which the teenager received a 10-month referral order, was a “watershed event” and should have led agencies to conclude he posed a “high risk of harm to others”.
The inquiry heard between 2019 and 2024, Rudakubana was referred to anti-terror programme Prevent three times, but the referrals were closed.
He purchased a number of weapons, including three machetes, online as well as ingredients he used to make the poison ricin.
Sir Adrian said as time passed, interaction between Rudakubana and organisations became “at best, something of a token”.
He said: “They were unaware of his continuing chilling internet preoccupations and his accumulation of lethal weapons, as well as the ingredients for a lethal poison.”
The inquiry also found that there was a "critical failure" in information sharing between agencies, with key information "repeatedly lost, diluted or poorly managed across agencies".
There was also a lack of responsibility taken by any one agency or multiple agencies for assessing and managing the risk posed by Rudakubana.
“Agencies repeatedly passing the risk to others and closing or downgrading their own involvement is not effective, or responsible, risk management," Sir Adrian said.
"If, as a society, we are to avoid repetition of what happened in AR’s case, this culture has to end. This is the single most important conclusion of Phase 1 of this report. This failure lies at the heart of why AR was able to mount the attack, despite so many warning signs of his capacity for fatal violence.
“I have made a number of recommendations in this report. Some of these recommendations are urgent; others will require longer-term structural reform. But all share a single purpose: to reduce the risk of another young person following a similar path to catastrophic violence.”
Sir Adrian said “degrading, violent and misogynistic material” viewed online by Rudakubana fed his “already unhealthy fascination with violence”.
Downloads including an Al-Qaeda training manual, a history of Nazi Germany and documents on wars in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Somalia and South Sudan, were discovered on tablets belonging to Rudakubana after his attack.
The inquiry chairman said the lack of exploration of Rudakubana’s “online life” was a “significant failure” which prevented agencies from identifying and addressing his risk.
He recommended that the second phase of the inquiry should consider the ability to restrict or monitor access to the internet of children if they pose a risk to others.
Sir Adrian also said agencies failed to recognise that Rudakubana’s diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder “significantly increased the risk that he posed” and there was a “repeated tendency” to excuse his behaviour on the basis of his autism.