Phase One of Southport Inquiry

Alex Rudakubana’s parents knew he was sociopathic. They are complicit in the murder of innocent girls.

LAURA PERRINS

Last week, phase one of the Southport Inquiry concluded. We found out, in short, Alex Rudakubana’s parents did nothing to stop their son murdering three girls in Southport on the 29^th of July 2024.

Alex Rudakubana travelled from his family home in Hart Space in Southport and attacked a dance class of little girls. Wielding a kitchen knife, he murdered three young girls, Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and stabbed eight other children and two adults. He is now serving a life sentence with a minimum of 52 years. At the sentencing hearing the Judge commented that he would have killed every one if he could.

In the run up to the attack Rudakubana had become more and more extreme in his actions. The parents facilitated his acquisition of knives including a machete. In fact so extreme was his behaviour that when news of the attack came through his brother assumed it was Rudakubana.

The following is taken from reporting by the Times. And the Liverpool Echo.

By the day of the attack on July 29, 2024, the 17-year-old had not been to school in two years, would not go out alone and was barely washing. He had been discharged by both social services and mental health professionals, who had marked him as posing no risk to others six days earlier. Yet he had been amassing a stash of weapons, terrorising his family and appeared to have been planning another attack just days before.

5 Years Previously

In October 2019, a police officer made a call to a home in Banks, Lancashire. Alex Rudakubana, then 13 had phoned Childline, telling them he had brought a knife to school, Range High School, and wanted to kill a fellow pupil who was bullying him. In fact he said he brought a knife to school on at least 10 occasions.

PC Alex McNamee spoke to the teenager, who told him he was “pretty certain” he would use the weapon when the other child made him angry. The PC marked the case as “high risk”, noting: “This shows potential for huge escalation.”

Rudakubana was expelled but returned two months later with a knife and hockey stick, claiming he wanted to hunt down his bully. He assaulted another boy and received a ten-month referral order.

During Covid, there were no recorded phone notes from Lancashire’s Youth Offending Team, and his post‑lockdown courses amounted to three half-hour sessions. Rudakubana was discharged in January 2021, his risk of reoffending judged “low” even though he had kicked his father in the groin two days earlier.

Rudakubana never re-entered mainstream education. He attended Acorns, a pupil referral unit. In 2020, an education, health and care plan (EHCP) warning he could be “cold and calculating” and “very angry” when challenged was claimed to be “watered down”, reducing the risk he posed.

Teachers at Acorns referred Rudakubana to Prevent three times, for searching for school shootings online, asking to see images of severed heads and for comments supporting Colonel Gaddafi. Joanne Hodson, now head teacher, said he was the most “unusual” pupil she had come across and that she “dreaded” what he might do.

From March 2022, Rudakubana was enrolled at Presfield High School, for children with autism, but attendance was just 0.7 per cent. The school repeatedly raised alarms, asking police for a welfare check but said that “red tape” prevented access. “Short of breaking in I don’t know how to see this kid,” wrote Cheryl Smith, the safeguarding lead.

Lancashire’s Children and Family Wellbeing Service opened his case four times before repeatedly closing it, despite his father “pleading” with them not to. Support workers noted the parents’ fear of their son and his “extreme thoughts”, yet the case was closed a final time three months before the attack due to a lack of engagement.

The family

The father, Alphonse Rudakubana was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as was the mother. Alphonse came to Britain, who granted him refuge in 2002. Alex Rudakubana and his brother Dion were both born in Cardiff.

The father lost both his parents and three of his sisters during the atrocity and was himself kidnapped and threatened by armed groups. His partner also had family members killed. The genocide was a topic of conversation in the family home as the boys grew older, with Alphonse telling the inquiry that he and his wife shielded the more graphic details from his sons.

Dion Rudakubana, 21, compared his brother to the sociopathic murderer in the film No Country for Old Men and speculated that he may have attacked the dance class in a calculated attempt to “hurt society” which viewed children as “very valuable.”

He said Rudakubana posed a constant “threat to life” but that he had always believed his brother was only a danger to their family. The inquiry heard how Rudakubana would smash plates, throw bottles and threaten to kill his father.

The threat of violence persisted to the point that Dion sent messages to a friend that the risk of his brother doing “something potentially fatal is the major concern”. He added, “My brother doesn’t really show mercy so my dad just has to try not to die.”

Online

Apparently unknown to his family, Rudakubana also consumed documents and pictures linked to genocide, torture, slavery and the Nazis, as well as anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic material. Alphonse admitted he had “lost control” over his son and he no longer had any authority over him.

Rudakubana instead spent large amounts of time alone on his computer reading about atrocities, terrorist attacks and mass violence, left to his own devices to ensure “relative calm” in the house.

Ms Muzayire, believed he was reading online journals because of his interests in history, economics, current affairs and politics. Asked why the family did not have parental locks, she said, “Because we never thought that our boys would go online to look at bad things.”

2022 – Major police failure

On March 17, 2022 Rudakubana went missing from home and was found by police officers armed with a knife – the only blade in the family home – on a bus. He told the officers he wanted to stab someone to get his social media accounts deleted and said he had an interest in making poison. “Inexplicitly the police returned him home without further punishment.” Dion recalled in the following days his brother was “angry at having been stopped…he was violent around the house for a while.”

Three girls were murdered because of this ‘inexplicable decision’ by the police to just act as a taxi service for a dangerous teenager who walks around with a knife and admits to them that he wants to stab someone and make poison.

Weapons

Rudakubana was obsessed with weapons and by this point was refusing to leave the house to attend Presfield High School. He amassed an arsenal of weapons including seeds to make the deadly toxin ricin, a bow and arrows and three machetes. He also had a sledgehammer, jerry can and knives. “The teenager likely funded the orders through a mixture of his own genealogy business, which saw thousands of pounds deposited in his account, and funds from his parents. Alphonse admitted to giving him money for tasks such as showering.”

Alphonse said he was aware of at least one machete, which was delivered as an age-verified parcel with an 18 plus sticker on the box. The parcel was delivered to the family’s next door neighbour under a false name. Alphonse said he didn’t open the package or confront his son about the contents because ‘it would have quickly escalated.’

“This is an instance I regret so much,” he added. “I should have called the police.” But for the most part Rudakubana’s online orders went unregulated and untouched. Asked about the packages, Dion said: “There was the same level of caution he had with us touching things of his generally.”

2024

By early 2024 Rudakubana was out of control, threatening to kill his dad after he was warned of eviction from the family home. Alphonse recalled an incident where his son tried to drink cooking oil before pouring it over his dad’s head. The boy then poked his dad in the chest and said “if you get me out of here, this house, it may take a day, a week, or it may be years, I will kill you.”

5 days before the attack

On 22^nd July 2024, Rudakubana had not left the house for years but he asked his dad about his former school, the Range, which was finishing for the summer holidays. Later that morning Rudakubana went into his dad’s bedroom holding a kitchen knife and asked for the machete which his dad had hidden the year before.

Alphonse said his son “started to lightly stab the bed” and he had to pull up his legs to avoid the blade. The dad managed to get Rudakubana out of the room and close the door. But soon after Rudakubana tried to get into a taxi with the knife, ordered the previous week from Amazon, stashed in a bag.

Alphonse begged the taxi driver not to take his son who eventually relented and allowed his dad to drag him back into the house. Rudakubana later told his dad, ‘next time if you stop me there will be consequences.”

Alphonse told the inquiry ‘I didn’t see it to mean that the next time he stepped out of the house he was going to attack people,’ instead, that the family had some months to work out what to do.

Asked if the reason his family did not report the incident to the police was because they didn’t want Rudakubana to go into care, Alphonse said: “Yes, we knew what to do…but we wanted to buy some time, just some time…I’m ashamed. I accept that responsibility. It was obvious then but it required so much courage.”

Dion returned from university just days later and was told by his dad to be “very careful” around his brother. But the older boy said he always felt the risk of danger was towards him or his parents. “The consistent risk to life inside the home had existed during those years and so my feeling at that point was entirely focused on that alone,” he said.

The Day of the Attack, 29^th of July 2024

The family woke late on July 29 and Alphonse helped his other son prepare for the day. But as they were getting ready they heard the front door slam. Ms Muzayire recalled running to Dion’s window and watching Rudakubana moving slowly out of the close. “I was worried but at the same time I thought he’s going to try and be brave and go for a walk…I immediately felt nervous and worried for him, but not that he would harm anyone” she said.

She went back into her room and “prayed” his walk went well after the family consulted each other after finding the Amazon knife packaging hidden in the washing machine.

News of the attack

Alphonse received a WhatsApp message later that day from a member of the family’s church who told him of the attack. He recalled when he heard helicopters above the house he “felt sure” it was his son.

Dion was in Specsavers when someone said there had been a mass stabbing. He told police: “I then started to worry it might be my brother,” but believed Rudakubana had attacked his parents. Asked why he believed his brother attacked a children’s dance event, Dion said: “Children are very valuable to society…and it would hurt society particularly badly if something like this happened.”

Complicit

Rudakubana’s family were the last people to give evidence to phase one of the inquiry this week. Both parents apologised for their son’s crimes, with Alphonse telling proceedings: “I’m ashamed I lost the courage to save their little angels,” while his wife added she grieves for the innocent lives lost.

But their apologies weren’t accepted by the three murdered girls’ families who released statements calling for accountability for their failures.

The Stancombes said: “Parents should be culpable when they knowingly allow such evil to exist unchecked under their own roof.”

The Aguiars said Rudakubana’s parents’ “failure to take responsibility, to act, and to intervene…directly contributed to the devastating loss of our daughter’s life.”

The Kings added: “Time after time, they had opportunities to intervene, to stop this, to protect others. If they had acted with any real sense of duty, Bebe, Elsie and Alice would still be here.”

This article (Phase one of Southport Inquiry) was created and published by Laura Perrins and is republished here under “Fair Use”