The teenager who killed three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack on a children’s dance class in Southport, England, last summer was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison.
A Liverpool courtroom heard harrowing details of how Axel Rudakubana, 18, rampaged through a dance studio where 26 children had gathered on the morning of July 29, intent on killing. But they also heard of the acts of heroism that had played out during and after the attack, as organizers and bystanders rushed to save children.
“The harm that Rudakubana has caused to each family, to each child, to the community has been profound and permanent,” said Judge Julian Goose, who presided over the case. “It was such extreme violence of the utmost and exceptionally high seriousness that it is difficult to comprehend why it was done.”
Under English law, the judge was not able to sentence him to a whole life order — meaning he would never be released from prison on parole — because he was 17 at the time of the attack. But Mr. Rudakubana, who pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and other charges earlier this week, must serve a minimum of 52 years before he could possibly be paroled, and the judge said it was unlikely that he would ever be released.
Mr. Rudakubana briefly appeared in Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday morning, wearing a gray sweatsuit and a blue medical mask that covered his mouth and nose. But as prosecutors began reading out the details of the case, he repeatedly shouted about feeling ill, and was eventually removed from court.
Judge Goose said that Mr. Rudakubana had been “determined to disrupt the hearing” so that he would not have to face his victims’ families, noting that his outbursts had come after medical specialists had examined him that morning and determined him fit to attend.
Prosecutors revealed the horrifying nature of the attack on July 29 as they read out the details of the case. Deanna Heer, a lawyer for the prosecution, said Mr. Rudakubana had “targeted the youngest, most vulnerable in order to spread the greatest level of fear and outrage, which he succeeded in doing.”
She told the courtroom that while Mr. Rudakubana was under arrest at the police station after the attack, he was heard saying, “It’s a good thing those children are dead,” and “I’m so glad.”
Ms. Heer recounted how he had traveled by taxi to Hart Space, where a sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children ages 6 to 11 was underway during the summer break from school. Visual evidence shown in court, taken from CCTV footage and police-worn body cameras, showed Mr. Rudakubana arriving outside the dance studio.
He entered the building and stabbed several children as well as Leanne Lucas, one of the teachers who had organized the class. Moments later, screams could be heard on the footage, before children were seen running from the building.
Some were covered in blood and collapsed before bystanders helped them.
Several people wept in the courtroom as the footage was shown, and some chose to leave, overcome by emotion. The injuries suffered by Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so severe that they died inside the building. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside but soon collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and died the next day. Eight other children and two adults, including Ms. Lucas, were wounded.
In a statement read out in court, Ms. Lucas said that her injuries had affected her physically and mentally.
“I, as do the girls, have scars we cannot unsee, scars we cannot move on from,” she said, adding, “To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible. For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”
But amid the horror, there was also heroism, the court heard. After Ms. Lucas was stabbed in the back, she still managed to usher the children out the door and urge them to run for safety, even as she bled from a severe wound.
Another teacher in the dance studio, Heidi Liddle, also encouraged children to flee, before one girl ran toward the bathroom. Ms. Liddle followed her inside, locked the door and braced her foot against it to protect them. She told the girl not to make a sound. The police later rescued them uninjured.
John Hayes, a businessman who worked nearby, rushed to Hart Space and tried to grab the knife from Mr. Rudakubana, before being wounded. Two window cleaners, also working nearby, Marcin Tyjon and Joel Verite, heard the commotion and ran to the scene. Mr. Tyjon gave CPR to Alice in a parking lot outside. Mr. Verite followed the police into the building, picked up Bebe and carried her out of the building, screaming as he did so because of the severity of her injuries.
Since Mr. Rudakubana pleaded guilty, a portrait of a deeply troubled young man obsessed with violence has emerged, as has the fact that he was on the radar of the local authorities for years before the attack in Southport, a town north of Liverpool.
After the attack, a series of anti-immigrant riots broke out in Britain after disinformation about the perpetrator’s identity swirled on social media and messaging apps. False claims that he was an undocumented immigrant or newly arrived asylum seeker were amplified by far-right agitators. Mr. Rudakubana is a British citizen who was born in Wales to parents originally from Rwanda.
At age 13 and 14, he was referred three times to Prevent, a British counterterrorism program. The first time was for researching school shootings during class, in 2019. Then in 2021, he was referred for uploading images of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, to his Instagram account, and for researching the London Bridge terrorist attack. But those referrals were ultimately dropped because it was determined each time that he did not meet the threshold for intervention.
There was no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology, the police and prosecutors said. Content found on Mr. Rudakubana’s computer and tablets showed a longstanding fascination with violence, killing and genocide.
The material included a history of Nazi Germany, reports on violence in modern Sri Lanka, documents about war in Chechnya, a book on clan cleansing in Somalia, academic reports on the Rwandan genocide and a paper on punishments used on enslaved people on 18th-century British plantations.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that the attack was a sign that terrorism in the country was evolving, and that young people were being radicalized by “a tidal wave of violence freely available online.”
Speaking during the sentencing hearing, Stan Reiz, the defense lawyer for Mr. Rudakubana, said that his client showed a “total lack of empathy” but added: “There is no psychiatric evidence before the court that a mental disorder contributed to the defendant’s actions.”
In addition to the murder and attempted murder charges, Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of producing a biological toxin, after investigators found ricin, a lethal chemical, under his bed, and of “possessing information” described as “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism,” because he had downloaded a PDF file titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual.”
The case has raised questions about how the authorities missed opportunities to stop the violence before it began. The government has said it will conduct a public inquiry into the case.
Mr. Starmer, in a statement issued on Thursday evening, said that the “thoughts of the entire nation are with the families and everyone affected by the unimaginable horrors that unfolded in Southport.”
“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve,” he added.
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