The missed opportunities to stop Southport triple killer Axel Rudakubana

Southport triple killer Axel Rudakubana was known to authorities for repeatedly carrying knives and his interest in mass murder and terror attacks.

A public inquiry has been announced after authorities missed a string of opportunities to identify the risk he posed to others before he murdered three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July last year.

On Thursday he was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in jail - with the judge saying it's "highly likely" he will never be released.

Rudakubana murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in the attack at the Hart Space on 29 July last year.

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He was referred three times to the government's anti-extremism programme and had contact with police, the courts, the justice system and mental health services in the years before the mass stabbing.

Schools

Rudakubana, now 18, first became known to officials in 2019, initially because of his anxiety and social isolation, then due to his troubling behaviour and because he was using school computers to research acts of violence.

He took a knife into Range High School, in Formby, in October 2019, leading to him being expelled, before returning to attack a child with a hockey stick two months later, while carrying a knife in his backpack.

The teenager went on to attend two specialist schools, The Acorns School in Lancashire and Presfield High School, as well as Specialist College in Southport - where his attendance was less than 1% - and teachers were concerned about his behaviour.

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He struggled to re-integrate into school following his exclusion, according to the Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership, which said "this was exacerbated by the pandemic".

Mental health services noted he was experiencing anxiety which prevented him from leaving his home.

Police

Police had repeated contact with the teenager between October 2019 and May 2022, including responding to four calls from his parents at their home in Banks, Lancashire, over concerns about his behaviour.

They included an argument when he kicked his father and caused damage to his car in November 2021 and an incident in May 2022 when Rudakubana was denied access to his computer.

On another occasion in March 2022, his mother called police to report him missing before a bus driver called officers because he hadn't paid his fare.

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Rudakubana admitted carrying a knife but he was taken home by police who gave his mother advice on how to secure knives.

Each time, officers made vulnerable child referrals to multi-agency safeguarding hub staff, who are meant to stop people from slipping through the net by sharing information indicating risk between different organisations.

An assessment suggested "early help", which is intended to support children and their families before the intervention of social workers, was needed.

He was convicted of assault, possession of an offensive weapon and possession of a knife over the hockey stick assault and received a youth justice referral order.

He completed the measure - where juveniles who plead guilty to their first offence are placed under supervision to try to stop them reoffending - which was focused on knife crime in 2021 having "fully engaged", according to the safeguarding partnership.

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Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Rudakubana also admitted to having carried a knife more than 10 times.

She said "the action against him was far too weak" and that he was "easily able" to order the kitchen knife he used to commit the attack - which had a 20cm blade - on Amazon using encrypted software to hide his identity.

Anti-extremism programme

He was referred to the government's Prevent anti-extremism scheme three times by schools, the first when he was just 13 years old in December 2019 around comments about a mass shooting.

The second came in February 2021 after another pupil highlighted social media posts about Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, while in April the same year.

There was a third when a teacher noticed he had two internet tabs open displaying searches about the London Bridge terror attacks during a lesson.

Each time his case was assessed but he was not deemed a terrorism risk and he has never been subject to a counterterrorism police investigation or declared a subject of interest to MI5.

The home secretary said a Prevent "learning review" has found the referrals shouldn't have been closed but instead referred to the specialist Channel programme for intervention.

The review found "too much weight was placed on the absence of ideology without considering the vulnerabilities to radicalisation or taking account of whether he was obsessed with massacre or extreme violence," and the cumulative significance of the repeated referrals wasn't properly considered.

Rudakubana was charged with an offence of possessing a document likely to be useful for terrorism - a PDF entitled "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual" - following a search of his home in the days after the Southport attack.

The charge, which he has also admitted, suggests he had the document, which contains instructions on how to commit knife and ricin attacks, as early as 29 August 2021, just months after his last Prevent referral in April of that year.

Officers found ricin in a pulp in a Tupperware box under his bed, with traces in a pestle and mortar, as well as castor beans - where the deadly toxin comes from - which are also believed to have been bought in 2022.

Obsession with violence and weapons

Also found on his devices were documents on violent subjects, including A Concise History Of Nazi Germany, The Myth Of The Remote Controlled Car Bomb and Amerindian Torture And Cultural Violence.

Pictures relating to wars and conflicts, including in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Korea, as well as images of knives and machetes, were discovered on his devices.

Police also found a machete and a knife identical to the one used in the attack, in which he murdered the three girls, while also injuring eight other children aged between seven and 13. Yoga instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes were also injured.

A week earlier on 22 July, he tried to travel to his former high school as pupils broke up for the summer holidays, but his father followed him out of the house and pleaded with the taxi driver not to take him.

He was wearing the same outfit - a green hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and a surgical mask - that he wore when he travelled by taxi to the Hart Space where the stabbings took place.

Minutes before he left home he searched social media site X for information about a mass stabbing at a church in Sydney in 2024.