The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been jailed for a minimum of 52 years for the “ferocious” and “sadistic” knife rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
The 18-year-old refused to appear in the dock as the judge said he would probably “never be released and he will be in custody for all his life” for the “savage” murder of three young girls and attempted murder of eight others, as well as two adults who tried to save them.
It can now be revealed that two years before the Southport attack, Rudakubana’s parents had called police four times in six months asking for help.
On one of those occasions, he was caught carrying a blade on a bus, but officers did not detain him and instead took him home and told his mother to keep knives out of his reach.
The full horror of his 12-minute attack was laid bare at Liverpool crown court on Thursday when it emerged that some of Rudakubana’s victims had been stabbed dozens of times, many with such force it broke their bones.
He chased some of the young girls as they fled in terror. Three girls – Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – suffered unsurvivable injuries. The attack on two of them could only be described as “sadistic”, the prosecutor, Deanna Heer KC, told a packed courtroom.
Sentencing Rudakubana to life with a minimum term of 52 years in prison, the judge, Mr Justice Julian Goose, said the triple killer would only be released if a Parole Board believes he is no longer a threat to the public, but he added: “It is likely he will never be released and he will be in custody for all of his life”.
Rudakubana could not be sentenced to a whole-life order – meaning he would never be released from prison – because he was nine days short of his 18th birthday when he carried out the attack at the Hart Space in Southport on 29 July last year.
The teenager, who was 17 when he carried out the attack, will be almost 70 before he is considered for release.
The sentencing, where about 40 relatives of the victims had gathered, was twice loudly interrupted by the defendant pleading for medical assistance. “My chest is hurting … I need to speak to a paramedic,” he shouted, before interrupting the judge as he tried to proceed: “Don’t continue! Don’t continue! Don’t continue!”
In court, family members of the victims were in tears as the shocking attack was relayed in full. CCTV footage played in court showed young girls screaming and running from the dance studio, seconds after Rudakubana entered at 11.45am – just 15 minutes before the girls were due to be collected by their parents.
The 26 girls were gathered around a table making bracelets when he appeared in the doorway, hooded and holding a 20cm knife.
Body-worn footage recorded by police showed the chaotic scenes as officers rushed into the bloodstained building, where Rudakubana was seen “crouching” over the body of one little girl.
One officer is heard to say: “She’s dead” and another yelled “Jesus” as others screamed around them. Moments later, officers found one of the dance teachers, Heidi Liddle, who had locked herself in a toilet with one of the girls. They were escorted from the building, crying with fear and relief.
In a statement read to court, the girl’s mother described how “time stood still” as she arrived to collect her to realise she was still inside with the knifeman.
Terrified, she rang her grandparents screaming that her daughter was dead, only to later find her inside alive. They suffer flashbacks, she said, adding that her hair had “fallen out due to the trauma”.
Several relatives of the victims left the courtroom, some in tears, before Heer detailed the horrifying pathological evidence of their injuries, which the Guardian has chosen not to publish.
Heer said Rudakubana had boasted of his attack shortly after being arrested, saying: “I’m so glad those kids are dead … it makes me happy.”
This was one of a number of “unsolicited comments” recorded on CCTV footage or noted down at the time, Heer said. He was also heard to say “So happy, six years old. It’s a good thing they are dead, yeah” and “I don’t care, I’m feeling neutral.”
Police believe he may have copied the stabbing methods he used in the Southport attack from an al-Qaida training manual he admitted possessing. He is also believed to have used it to attempt to make ricin.
A chemical weapons expert concluded that the ricin found in Rudakubana’s bedroom was actively poisonous but there is no evidence it was ever used.
He had bought enough castor beans, the ingredient used to make the toxin, to produce up to 12,000 lethal inhalations, had he completed the process of distilling it, the court was told.
A public inquiry will examine the missed opportunities to stop Rudakubana, who had been referred three times to Prevent, the government’s anti-extremism programme, which did not believe he posed a threat.
Goose accepted the prosecution’s evidence that there was no evidence of a terrorism motive but said that the debate over whether it was terrorism or not “misses the point”. “In my judgment his culpability for this level of violence is equivalent to terrorism matters, whatever the motive,” he said.
The judge said some would describe the teenager’s actions as “evil” and that “on any view it was the most extreme shocking and serious crime”.
“It was such extreme violence of utmost and exceptionally high seriousness that it is difficult to comprehend why it was done,” he said, adding that Rudakubana was “determined to cause maximum suffering” and caused “profound and permanent” harm to the families and the wider Southport community.
“Had he been able to, he would have killed each and every one of them – all 26 of them – as well as any adult who got in his way,” the judge added.
Rudakubana’s barrister, Stanley Reiz KC, said there was little mitigation he could offer for “offences of such wickedness”.
He said Rudakubana had turned at the age of 13 from a “normal well-disciplined child to someone who was capable of committing acts of such shocking and senseless violence”.
He said the teenager 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”.
DChI Jason Pye, the senior investigating officer at Merseyside police, said: “This was the most harrowing, large-scale investigation that our force has ever dealt with, and I want to praise the commitment, dedication, and sheer determination of the investigation team who have never had to deal with anything like this before.”
