A teenage girl who was stabbed twice in the Southport attack has described staring into the killer's 'possessed' eyes and reliving that day 'like a horror film on repeat'. The schoolgirl, identified only as Child C6, gave evidence through tears at Liverpool town hall on Thursday, telling the public inquiry into the atrocity that it must explain how knife-obsessed Axel Rudakubana was able to carry out the murders.
'Why wasn't he stopped? There were multiple occasions where this could've been prevented,' she said. 'Why did the agencies involved not speak to each other? How many others are out there like him? This can't happen again.' The hearings, led by retired senior judge Sir Adrian Fulford, are examining failures to prevent the killing of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and the attempted murder of eight other girls and two adults on 29 July last year.
The girl described how she had agreed to help and take pictures at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class, which her younger sister attended. The room was filled with 'laughter and excitement' before Rudakubana, then 17, walked in minutes before the workshop was due to end. 'At first I thought it must be some sort of joke... but I saw him in his green hoodie, with the face mask on, and I looked at his eyes. He looked possessed. He didn't look human,' she said.
The teenager was stabbed in her arm and then her back as she turned to run, breaking two of her back bones and collapsing a lung. She became separated from her little sister in the chaos: 'I didn't know where my sister was and that scared me more than anything.' Her sister had been best friends with Alice, who died in hospital. '[My sister] still has nightmares,' she added.
The mother of another girl, identified as Child C5, described her daughter's 'catastrophic' injuries. The youngster lost her entire blood volume at the scene and needed skin grafts and removal of her spleen. 'She was minutes away from death,' her mother said. Fourteen months on, she wears pressure garments 23 hours a day to heal her scars.
