A teenager has been handed one of the longest jail terms in UK history for the “sadistic” and “meticulously planned” murder of three small children in Southport last July.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to life with a minimum of 52 years in prison on Thursday after admitting to the murder of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
He had also pleaded guilty to 10 attempted murders, as well as possession of an al-Qaeda training manual and the toxic substance ricin.
After time already served, the minimum sentence was 51 years and 190 days. Sentencing, Mr Justice Goose said: “It is highly likely that he will never be released.”
Rudakubana is said to have shown no remorse since the attacks six months ago, which prompted riots across the country and questions about how authorities failed to spot multiple warning signs about his behaviour.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that he had gloated about the killings at a police station after his arrest, saying: “It’s a good thing those children are dead . . . so glad . . . so happy.”
The court heard harrowing details about the attack itself, and that Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, had planned his rampage for several weeks beforehand.
Six minutes before leaving his house at 11.10am on Monday, July 29, he searched the social media platform X for footage of a terror attack that had taken place in Australia a few months earlier, in which the bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed at a church in Sydney.
Doorbell footage then shows him pacing up and down outside his house with his hood up.
Armed with a 20cm kitchen knife, he caught a taxi to the workshop in the Hart Space centre, Southport, where 26 children had gathered to dance, sing and make friendship bracelets.
The court heard that Rudakubana went upstairs to the class and 30 seconds later began stabbing children wordlessly.
He stabbed some victims in the back as they tried to escape. Alongside the three murdered children, eight other children and two adults were also injured.
Police found Rudakubana silently standing over a child’s body on the landing, still holding the kitchen knife he had used to carry out the attack.
Later searches of the house he shared with his parents in Banks, Lancashire, uncovered a machete, a set of arrows, bottles with matches attached, and an Apollo Cerbera knife identical to the one used in the attack. Both knives had been bought on Amazon on July 13, using a virtual private network to encrypt his internet address.
Police also found a Tupperware box containing a “pulp”-like substance under his bed. Tests by the UK government laboratory Porton Down confirmed it to be the deadly substance ricin, which he had made in his bedroom.
Police also seized 43 electronic devices from his home, 32 of which they were able to access.
While his internet search history had mostly been deleted, they uncovered more than 164,000 downloaded documents spanning a vast range of extreme violent imagery and information. Subject matter included beheadings, genocides, wars in Iraq, Rwanda, Gaza and Sudan, and images of weapons.
Rudakubana had also downloaded an academic paper containing an excerpt from an al-Qaeda training manual.
Mr Justice Goose concluded that Rudakubana had followed the instructions it contained in order to carry out the killings.
“I am satisfied that for some time, he had planned to kill as many people as he could,” he said, adding that anyone who had heard the evidence in the case “would describe what he did as evil”.
Merseyside chief constable Serena Kennedy said the murders had amounted to a “sadistic” rampage carried out by a teenager with an “unhealthy fascination with violence”.
“Having researched atrocities committed by others, the evidence suggests that he set out to emulate them on July 29,” she said, adding that there was no evidence he ascribed to “any particular political or religious ideology”.
“He wasn’t fighting for a cause,” she said. “His only purpose was to kill and he targeted the youngest, most vulnerable in order to spread the greatest level of fear and outrage, which he succeeded in doing.”
Rudakubana — who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and had been known to children’s and mental health services, as well as the anti-extremism programme Prevent — said nothing in formal police interviews.
During Thursday’s hearing Rudakubana shouted over the prosecutor and demanded to see a paramedic.
The court heard he had stopped eating while on remand. He was taken away for medical checks and did not return to court, after promising to continue disrupting proceedings.
The attack last July helped to spark a wave of riots across the UK, including in the Merseyside town of Southport itself, after misinformation spread online that the attacker was an illegal immigrant.
Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff to Rwandan immigrants, was not charged with an act of terror, although he was convicted of possessing terror-related material. Police and prosecutors said that current legislation did not allow for a terror charge due to Rudakubana’s apparent lack of ideology.
They said there was no evidence he had been working with others, or of activity in online chats or forums.
However, he had been known to the government’s anti-extremism programme Prevent, to whom he was referred three times between 2019 and 2021.
On the first occasion, in November 2019, he was referred by his school after searching for information on school shootings during an information technology class.
In February 2021, he was referred after a fellow pupil raised concerns over his Instagram posts about former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. Two months later he was referred by a teacher who noted he had two tabs open on his computer about the London Bridge terror attacks of 2017.
In each case, the programme took no further action, noting a lack of overriding ideology.
Ahead of the sentencing Vicki Evans, senior national co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said the Prevent programme’s understanding of such extremism had still been “evolving” at the time.
Earlier this week Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a public inquiry into the killings, as well as a review of the Prevent programme.
Lancashire police were contacted five times about Rudakubana between 2019 and 2022.
In March 2022, he went missing and was found by police in possession of a knife. He told officers that he wanted to stab someone and had thought about poisoning people.
Rudakubana had also been convicted under the youth justice system after attacking a fellow pupil with a hockey stick in 2019. He had taken a knife into school 10 times previously.
Lancashire police said prior to sentencing that it had reviewed each of its call-outs to Rudakubana but could not discuss the details further, due to the forthcoming public inquiry.
In court, victims and their families read out harrowing accounts of the impact last July’s attack had on their lives.
Leanne Lucas, who had organised the dance class in Southport, was stabbed by Rudakubana and helped many of the children escape.
“As a 36-year-old woman,” she said, “I cannot walk down the street without holding my breath as I bypass a person and then glance back to see if they’ve attempted to stab me.”
