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 “sadistic” teenager in the years before he murdered three young girls and tried to kill 10 others at a Taylor Swift dance class last summer.
It can now be revealed that officers failed to arrest Rudakubana when he was found in possession of a knife on a bus in March 2022.
Instead of detaining the then 15-year-old – who had also been excluded from school in 2019 for carrying a knife – they took him home and gave his mother “advice regarding securing knives in the home”, said the assistant chief constableof Lancashire police Mark Winstanley.
The incident can be revealed after Rudakubana, now 18, was jailed for 52 years on Thursday for the murders of six-year-old Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and the attempted murder of 10 others.
The bus incident, which came 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.
The role of Lancashire police and other agencies will be scrutinised by the public inquiry ordered by Keir Starmer this week after he said the state’s failures “frankly leap off the page”.
It emerged on Thursday that Lancashire police first visited Rudakubana in October 2019 and he had contacted Childline and asked: “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?”
Stanley Reiz KC, his defence barrister, told the court that Rudakubana had told officers he wanted to stab someone so police would seize his phone and “delete embarrassing videos he had on social media”.
He was “fixated” on removing the videos, Reiz said, and “did not appear to understand the consequence that such action would have”. He said the teenager had exhibited a “startling lack of empathy” and had for five years struggled with “difficulties with social communication and interacting in line with his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder”.
Days later the teenager said he hated someone at school who had bullied him and wanted to kill them, Liverpool crown court was told.
Rudakubana told Childline that he had taken a knife to school but would only use it if the person really annoyed him. He confirmed he had taken a knife to school when police visited him, telling officers he thought he would use it if he became angry.
He was permanently excluded from the school shortly after when he admitted taking a knife on to the premises on at least 10 occasions, the court heard.
This was two months before Rudakubana was referred for the first time to the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme, Prevent, due to concerns about him viewing extreme material online.
On 5 November 2021, Rudakubana’s parents contacted police after he became “distressed” when a stranger knocked on the door.
Three weeks later they called the force again after an argument which saw the schoolboy “kick” his father, Alphonse Rudakubana, and damage his car. Police took no further action against the teenager after his father said he did not want to prosecute.
He was caught by police with a knife on a bus on 17 March 2022 and, two months later, officers were called to the family home again after Rudakubana’s behaviour “escalated after he was denied access to a computer”.
Winstanley said the teenager’s parents asked officers for “assistance to help cope with him”.
After each callout, officers referred his case to local safeguarding officials who then assessed him as a vulnerable child and offered support for behaviour issues.
However, Rudakubana had become more socially isolated and stopped attending a local specialist school for children with autism and Asperger’s. The school, Presfield in Southport, called police in March 2023 to ask them to conduct a welfare check on the teenager as he had not attended since May 2022.
Winstanley said officers were not sent to check on Rudakubana because “there was no immediate concern for his safety, and the circumstances did not reach the threshold for police deployment”.
He said the decisions taken by the officers were based on the information available to the officers at the time, and said “any learning or other outcomes for policing will be fully implemented” after the public inquiry.
The repeated involvement of local police came less than a year after Rudakubana was deemed not to pose a risk despite the three Prevent referrals.
Counter-terrorism officials closed his case each time despite meeting him only once, it is understood. The first referral was in December 2019 after teachers raised the alarm about his fascination with mass shootings.
A senior police source said it was unlikely that Lancashire police would have known about the Prevent referrals when they decided not to take firmer action.
It is understood that the details of cases investigated by Prevent could only be seen by counter-terrorism officers, not regular police, raising concerns that Rudakubana was allowed to slip through the cracks.
The policing source said a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies was likely to be one of the failures identified in the public inquiry.
