AGENCY
London, Jan 21
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday (Jan 20) ordered a public inquiry into the systemic failings that enabled 18-year-old Axel Rudak-ubana to carry out the horrific knife attack on children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport last summer. The inquiry follows Rudakubana’s guilty plea to the murders of three young girls and attempted murders of 10 others in what is one of the UK’s most horrifying attacks on children. The UK Prime Minister described the country’s inability to protect the victims as a “failure of duty”.Announcing the inquiry, home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the families of the victims “need answers”. The decision to launch an inquiry came amid revelations that Rudakubana had been flagged to the Prevent — UK government’s anti-radicalisation programme three times, the first time in 2019, over four years before the attack. Despite this, and extensive contact with law enforcement, social services, and mental health agencies, the violent teenager’s escalating danger was not sufficiently addressed.Rudakubana, referred to ‘Prevent’ three times between 2019 and 2021, was already known for his violent tendencies and fixation on mass killings. As per the Guardian, one of these referrals came after he raised eyebrows with his interest in the killing of children in a school massacre.”Yet between them, those agencies failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed,” said Cooper.Authorities had been warned about his obsession with genocides, including the Holocaust and the Rwandan ethnic massacres. His father is believed to have fought with the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA).A week before the attack, on July 22, Rudakubana’s father prevented him from travelling to a school he had been expelled from in 2019 for bringing a knife.
, reports The Guardian citing neighbours who saw Alphonse Rudakubana remonstrating his son outside their home. The July 29, 2024 attack on the Hart Space community centre shocked the nation. Rudakubana killed Bebe King, 6, Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, while attempting to kill 10 others. He injured several others, including dance teacher Leanne Lucas, who was stabbed while shielding children. On the first day of his trial, Axel Rudakubana pleaded “guilty” to all 16 charges put to him. This included three counts of murder, attempted murder of 10 other children and two adults, possession of terrorist materials, including an Al-Qaida handbook and producing ricin a deadly toxin.
