The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was stopped by his father from taking a taxi to a school he was expelled from days before he murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
The teenager was seen getting into a taxi outside his home just minutes before students at his former school left for the summer holidays last July.
Neighbours saw Rudakubana, 18, eventually get out of the car and return to his home after a discussion with his father, Alphonse Rudakubana.
Residents on the cul-de-sac in the Lancashire village of Banks later said they believed he had been intending to travel to Range high school in Formby, Merseyside, where he was permanently excluded in about 2019. A senior official has confirmed this incident.
It took place on 22 July, a week before he murdered three young girls and attempted to murder 10 other people at a holiday club in Southport.
Rudakubana is understood to have been excluded from the school over claims he was carrying a knife after being racially bullied by other pupils.
The teenager later returned to the school and threatened to attack teachers and pupils with a hockey stick on which he had written their names, sources said.
The incidents can only now be reported after Rudakubana pleaded guilty on Monday to the murder of three young girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven – and trying to kill 10 others at the Hart Space on 29 July.
He also pleaded guilty to producing the deadly poison, ricin, and possessing a study prohibited in the UK under terrorism laws titled: Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaida Training Manual.
He admitted the charges in a dramatic change of plea on what was expected to be the first day of his trial at Liverpool crown court. He faces life in jail when he is sentenced on Thursday.
Neighbours said they saw police cars outside the family home “half a dozen” times in the weeks before he attacked the Hart Space centre, 5 miles away.
After he was expelled from Range high school, Rudakubana is understood to have attended two specialists schools, the Acorns school in Lancashire and Presfield high school & specialist college in Southport.
Teachers at those school were concerned about his behaviour, sources said, with one understood to have said his issues were far greater than they could manage.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said he would demand that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, appears in parliament to explain why Rudakubana’s terror charge was not revealed sooner.
Police announced in October that the teenager would be charged with possessing the al-Qaida academic study, which was found on one of his devices days after the atrocity.
However, the attack itself has never been declared a terrorist incident because no evidence pointing to a specific terrorist motive has been discovered.
For an attack to be declared as terrorism under UK law, it must have been carried out “for the purpose of political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. In this case, police and prosecutors have been unable to establish the motive for the stabbings.
Farage accused the government on Monday of being responsible “for the most astonishing cover-up” and said his party would table an urgent question in parliament “as to why we have been denied the basic truth”.
He added: “I asked that question 24 hours after the murders. I said why are we not being told the truth? Was this man known to the authorities? We were met with a complete wall of silence. The prime minister and the home secretary refused to engage, Liverpool police refused to engage.”
The Guardian revealed on Monday that Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme, but had not been deemed to pose a threat.
One of the referrals followed concerns about his potential interest in the killing of children in a school massacre, it is understood.
The killings led to the spread of disinformation about the suspect, with far-right sources falsely claiming the attacker was an Islamist extremist who arrived in the UK by small boat. The misinformation fuelled a series of riots across England that resulted in more than 1,000 people being charged.
One senior official said the teenager, who is autistic, was under the supervision of social services, and local authority workers would insist on a police officer being present at their meetings with him.
