Southport yoga teacher reveals desperate attempt to save children from knife attacker in emotional BBC interview

A yoga teacher who almost died in the Southport attack admitted she felt she had to survive in order to save the children in her class, despite being stabbed five times.

Leanne Lucas was overseeing a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the Merseyside town on July 29 last year, when Axel Rudakubana, then 17, entered the building and started attacking children and adults.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ms Lucas told BBC Panorama: "I just knew that if I didn't get out, everyone was going to die.”

"He was bigger than me. And I just thought: I need to get some help. So we all run towards the door.

“We were shouting: 'Run!' I called 999 on the landing and I asked for the police."

Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, died in the attack and Rudakubana attempted to murder Ms Lucas, businessman John Hayes and eight other children.

Leanne Lucas told BBC Panorama she felt she had to survive in order to save the children in her class, despite being stabbed five times (BBC)

Bebe King, left, Elsie Dot Stancombe, centre, and Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in the attack by Axel Rudakubana at a dance class in Southport last summer (Merseyside Police/PA) (PA Media)

Despite suffering stab wounds to her spine, head, ribs, lung and shoulder blade, Ms Lucas managed to get herself and several children out of the room and call the police.

Once out of the building, Ms Lucas said she urged people on the street to rescue the girls.

"My brain is going 100 miles an hour but my body won't do anything," she said.

"And there are people asking me questions and I am saying: 'Go and get the children.'

"I just don't know what else I could have done."

Fourteen-year-old Sarah — a fellow survivor whose identity is protected by a court order — also spoke to the programme, telling the BBC of how she managed to fight through serious injury to lead several of the children to safety.

She said: "I remember seeing the girls all like huddling around the stairs. So I remember shouting for them to get down and get out.

"So I was physically pushing them down the stairs to get everyone out.

"I thought that he wasn't going to stop until he killed everyone. I thought that he wanted to kill us all."

Floral tributes near to the scene in Southport where the stabbings happened (James Speakman/PA) (PA Archive)

Sarah was left with life-threatening injuries and fractures to two of her spinal vertebrae.

More children would have died in the attack if Ms Lucas and Sarah had not taken the action that they did.

Rudakubana - who was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January - attempted to murder eight other children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as well as businessman John Hayes and Ms Lucas.