Police told Axel Rudakubana’s mother to keep knives out of his reach two years before the Southport attack, after he was caught carrying a blade on a bus. Lancashire police are facing questions over their handling of the teenager, who later murdered three young girls and attempted to kill ten others at a Taylor Swift dance class last summer.
The then 15-year-old was found in possession of a knife on a bus in March 2022, but officers took him home and gave his mother advice about securing knives, rather than arresting him. Assistant Chief Constable Mark Winstanley confirmed the incident, which occurred after Rudakubana's mother had reported him missing, was one of four police callouts to the family home in the six months to May 2022.
Rudakubana, now 18, was jailed for 52 years on Thursday for the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and the attempted murder of ten others. The public inquiry ordered by Sir Keir Starmer will scrutinise the role of Lancashire police and other agencies, with the Prime Minister saying the state's failures “frankly leap off the page”.
It also emerged that police first visited Rudakubana in October 2019 after he contacted Childline asking: “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?” His defence barrister, Stanley Reiz KC, told the court that Rudakubana wanted to stab someone so police would seize his phone and delete embarrassing videos. He was permanently excluded from school in 2019 for carrying a knife, having admitted taking a blade on to the premises at least ten times.
Two months later, he was referred to the Prevent anti-radicalisation scheme due to concerns about viewing extreme material online. In November 2021, his parents called police after he kicked his father and damaged his car, but no further action was taken. After the bus knife incident, officers referred his case to local safeguarding officials, who assessed him as a vulnerable child. However, Rudakubana stopped attending a specialist school for autism in May 2022, and a welfare check requested by the school in March 2023 was not carried out due to a lack of immediate concern.
