Axel Rudakubana’s obsession with extreme violence and fixation with disturbing online images had been signposted for a number of years – from his call to Childline and taking knife to school to the day of the Southport attack, the Mirror looks back on the warning signs
Axel Rudakubana’s brutal murder of three young girls was not “a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky” with warnings about his obsession with extreme violence signposted for years, the Southport inquiry found.
The killer also had fixation with disturbing online images and his parents, the police, anti-extremism agencies and other authorities all knew about him carrying knives, his aggression and his admissions that he wanted to kill or seriously harm others.
Yet a series of failings meant no decisive action was taken – leading to the horrific events at the Taylor Swift themed dance class in Southport on July 29, 2024. Rudakubana, then aged 17, entered the Hart Space venue with a “cowardly and murderous plan”. Once inside “he killed and inflicted devastating injuries on as many children as he was able”. Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, tragically lost their lives.
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Inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford said it was a “chilling and carefully planned assault”. He said it was known that from his early teens Rudakubana had “become ever more fixated on extreme violence” – and part of the blame lay with the lack of parental controls. His mum and dad, Alphonse and Laetitia Muzayire, were a church going couple, but at home they were losing control of their volatile younger son.
Sir Adrian said had his parents done “what they morally ought to have done” and reported his behaviour then he would not have been free on the day of the attack.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents. Aged 11 he showed a passion for acting, appearing as Doctor Who in a BBC Children in Need advert, wearing spectacles and an oversized trenchcoat. However, over the years he became more reclusive.
The first serious signs Rudakubana was becoming a danger came while he was a pupil at the Range High School in Formby, Merseyside, in 2019. He was expelled after admitting he had brought a knife to school on about 10 occasions. When asked by staff at another school why he had carried a knife, he said: “To use it.”
He called Childline claiming he had experienced racist bullying, asking them: “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?”
Two months after his expulsion, Rudakubana returned to the school carrying a hockey stick, which he used to attack another child. He had to be restrained by staff.
Health workers determined he had an autism spectrum disorder and he was enrolled in two other schools for children with special needs: The Acorns School and Presfield High School & Specialist College. He only attended sixth form at the latter only for a few days and was largely dealt with by home visits. The school sometimes requested police accompany teachers when visiting.
During the years in which he stopped attending school, several local agencies had various levels of contact with Rudakubana. He was referred to the youth justice service for rehabilitation activities offered to young offenders who plead guilty to a first offence.
In March 2022, Rudakubaba’s mum called the police to report him missing. Officers later found him on a bus after the driver called 999 because he was refusing to pay. He told them he was carrying a knife and that he wanted to stab someone.
In his report, Sir Adrian said: “He was not arrested and the incident was, in essence, treated as a safeguarding issue. AR should instead have been arrested by the officers who attended at the scene. In addition, however, to carrying the knife AR, without prompting, referred to poisoning others. This revelation should, without more, have led to his arrest.
“His home would then have been searched and the items which would inevitably have been found would have led to criminal charges and a potential custodial sentence.”
He said: “As a consequence, the attack on 29 July 2024 would probably not have occurred, albeit it is important that I stress that there were other missed opportunities further down the line.”
The inquiry said that over a long period of time, Rudakubana had become an aggressive, near-total recluse, who bullied and threatened his family and unashamedly lied to officials.
It stated: “As a teenager, he had researched websites selling a wide range of knives, crossbows, bows and arrows, machetes, sledgehammers, and the items needed for making multiple Molotov cocktails.
“He had asked his father to buy him petrol and he had purchased a sizeable petrol can. A number of weapons or other potentially lethal items of this kind had been purchased by him online and delivered to the family’s home address.
“Indeed, he had bought, again online, the ingredients necessary for manufacturing the highly lethal poison, ricin, and he had experimented by making a crude preparation of this exceptionally dangerous substance.”
It said for over two years before the attack AR had only left home by himself when he was intending to kill or seriously harm others.
Rudakubana also came to the attention of the government’s anti-extremism Prevent programme because he had expressed an interest in school shootings, the London Bridge attack, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East.
He was referred to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021 over concerns about his interest in violence. Each time, the concerns were raised from within his schools – including that he was using a school computer to research acts of violence.
In December 2019, he was referred after making comments about a mass shooting In February 2021, a fellow pupil raised concerns after Rudakubana posted images of Colonel Gaddafi on Instagram. And in April 2021, a teacher raised concerns after noticing he was reading about the 2017 London Bridge attack, in which eight people were killed.
The full scale of his obsessions became clearer after the attack when his home and digital devices were searched.
Police found his devices contained images from conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Korea, as well as copious academic material relating to war and genocide. His search history revealed an interest in Nazi Germany, ethnic violence in Somalia and Rwanda, and slavery.
Detectives also found an American academic study of an al-Qaeda training document, which had been downloaded at least twice since 2021.
Sir Adrian said on the day of the murders he was confident Rudakubana was fully aware that those attending would be very young girls, along with the two female organisers.
The class got under way at 10am and photos showed 26 children laughing and playing at the start of the school holidays.
At 11:10, Rudakubana left his home, his face obscured by a hood and a surgical mask. He was carrying a 20cm-long kitchen knife purchased on Amazon on 13 July.
A taxi picked him up at 11:30 and he stayed silent throughout the journey. He left the car without paying and made his way to a garage. The driver followed him and there was a confrontation.
When the garage owner told him to pay for his ride, Rudakubana replied: “What are you going to do about it?” He then went inside the dance studio and began to stab the children at will.
When police searched his home, they found a cache of weapons, including a machete, a set of arrows and a sealed box containing an unknown substance. Tests at Porton Down, the government’s biological warfare laboratory, confirmed the substance was ricin, a poison for which there is no cure.
It has also emerged that one week before the murders, Rudakubana tried to return to Range High School, but was prevented from making the journey when his father pleaded with a taxi driver not to take him.
Rudakubana, now 19, was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison after pleading guilty to the murders in January last year. He also admitted 10 counts of attempted murder, producing ricin, and possessing an Al Qaeda training manual.
