A dance teacher injured in the Southport attack has said Axel Rudakubana’s victims have scars “we cannot unsee”, as survivors gave their harrowing accounts of the day.
Leanne Lucas was overseeing a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29 last year, when Rudakubana entered the building armed with a knife and attacked children and adults.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, died in the attack at the Hart Space, and Rudakubana also attempted to murder eight other children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, Ms Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
At Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday, Ms Lucas told of living in constant fear since the attack, unable to feel safe at work or in public places and said she can not give herself compassion or accept praise, adding: “How can I live knowing I survived when children died?”
She said it left her unable to trust society, revealing the “badness” lurking in plain sight and altering her mindset to believe harm can happen to anyone.
The 36-year-old told the court that she dedicated her life to helping children and families, creating a safe community, but the attack robbed her of her role, purpose and sense of trust in herself.
Ms Lucas said: “On that day, I received several injuries that have not only affected me physically but also mentally. I, as do the girls, have scars we cannot unsee, scars we cannot move on from.”
She described the trauma of being both a victim and a witness as “horrendous” but said she is “surviving” for the victims, telling the court “to discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible”.
Heidi Liddle, one of the class’s instructors, said she “felt completely helpless” after the attack because she “didn’t know how many children were hurt or where they were”.
In a statement read in court by prosecutor Deanna Heer KC, Ms Liddle said: “I felt isolated from everyone as I felt like I couldn’t leave my home. I was in tears constantly and didn’t feel safe in my own home.”
She told of replaying the attack “over and over” in her mind, saying she has since struggled with everyday activities.
Another victim statement came from the mother of the girl who was trapped in the toilet with Ms Liddle while Rudakubana was in the building stabbing children on the other side of the door.
The girl’s mother said she “arrived to chaos” after travelling to The Hart Space to pick up her daughter, saying she ran towards the building screaming her name.
She said: “Heidi had saved my girl that day by following her to the toilet after my daughter headed there instead of down the stairs and out of the door with other children.
“She shielded the toilet door whilst the attacker tried to get in. I owe everything to Heidi for having the foresight to protect my daughter.
“I can only imagine how an eight-year-old felt being on the other side of that thin door hearing the screams of the other children as they escaped, followed by the attacker trying his best to get in to kill them.”
She said she and her daughter had been left psychologically scarred by these events, both regularly experiencing flashback nightmares.
Also during the hearing, a tearful father of a nine-year-old girl, who was stabbed but survived, told of the impact the attack had on his daughter.
Reading her words, he said: “It has been very hard to deal with what happened to me at Hart Space. I struggle with my emotions and I have scars that I know will be with me forever, but I want to look forward.
“When people in school asked me ‘Do you wish you weren’t there that day?’ I said that, in some ways, I wish I wasn’t, but also, if I wasn’t there, someone else would have been stabbed and they could have died, so I’m glad I might have stopped someone else getting hurt’.”
Her father said the words “both horrify us and make us immeasurably proud”, saying that his daughter is “everything that Axel Rudakabana is not”.
The thing I remember most about you is your eyes. You didn’t look human, you looked possessed
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl who survived the attack, told the court how the “day turned into a living nightmare”.
Reading her statement via video link, she said of Rudakabana: “The thing I remember most about you is your eyes. You didn’t look human, you looked possessed.”
She told of being stabbed in the arm and back and that all she could hear was screams.
The girl went on: “I was so scared of what you were doing and I was in a blind panic. I ran out onto the landing and there was a group of girls huddled and I began just screaming for the girls to get down the stairs.
“I remember I was physically pushing them down the stairs to get them out of the building and get away from you. I knew I was running for my life. I needed to try to get everyone out and to safety – that was my first thought.”
Give me a reason for what you did. Arming yourself with a weapon and stabbing children. I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing we think you’re a coward
Describing the aftermath of the attack, the girl became emotional as she said: “Physically I’ve healed but my scars remain as a reminder of what you did to me, to us all.
“No sane person could do that. It’s sickening what you did, going in there knowing you’re going into a room full of defenceless children.
“Give me a reason for what you did. Arming yourself with a weapon and stabbing children. I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing we think you’re a coward.”
A victim statement was also read from the first child who Rudakubana stabbed.
The girl, aged 10 at the time, said she was thinking “I don’t want to die, I have got to get out of here”.
She went on: “I still have nightmares once or twice a week where I replay what happened and wake up and feel a bit on edge.
“I think about all the other children that were there and I feel guilty that I wasn’t able to help the children that died and I think, ‘Was there anything I could have done to help them?’”
The mother of two girls who survived the attack said the day “changed our lives as a family forever”.
In her statement, read by the prosecutor, she said: “As parents, we feel helpless, we feel guilty. We have to live with the guilt that we sent our children to that event on that day, which will now impact them for the rest of their life … trust has broken between us and our children, they constantly question us about whether they are going to be safe. It feels as though they blame us for taking them there that day.”
The parents of one of the injured girls said her father was unable to recognise her when he went to pick her up from the dance class because she was so badly hurt.
They said: “Our daughter has not only experienced the most violent, frenzied attack on her body but she’s witnessed so much horror too.
“Her entire childhood has been destroyed by what she experienced and, although she survived, she now has to carry that with her for the rest of her life.”
In another statement, the parents of an injured child condemned Rudakubana’s lack of remorse, vowing to remember the girls’ bravery over his actions.
