Three police officers, who have been voted Britain’s bravest officers, have described confronting, disarming and arresting the Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.

The trio, from the Merseyside force, were first on the scene as the crazed teenager rampaged with a knife through a children’s dance workshop last summer, murdering three youngsters and attacking others.

Southport wasn’t Sergeant Greg Gillespie’s beat and he was there that day covering for a colleague on holiday.

He described the scene outside the building on Hart Street as he arrived on his own.

He said: “There was maybe 20 or 25 adults, and all of them were looking at me, and all of them have this look of terror and fear, panic on their faces and I knew whatever it was we were turning up to was really, really bad.”

His colleagues PC Luke Holden, 31, and PCSO Tim Parry, 32, drove fast from Southport police station and were 30 seconds or so behind Sgt Gillespie.

PC Holden said: “I jumped out of the police car, and immediately there were people running up to me and one was an off-duty colleague who was screaming and crying, pointing ‘he’s in there, he’s there’ and then as I started to run to the building I could see blood all over the floor.

“As I got to the door, that was partially smashed. Greg was stood there one foot in, one foot out.

“There was a large puddle of blood on the floor outside the door and he just looked at me for one second and said, are you ready? And that was it, there was no conversation.

“There was nothing else going on. He said, ‘Are you ready’, and I said, ‘yeah, let’s go’.”

‘It was a horrific scene’

PCSO Parry, who doesn’t carry a baton or a pepper spray like his colleagues, went to the back of the building to stop people going, help anyone who needed it and get information on the number of suspects inside.

He said: “It was a horrific scene to really go into because I was so unprepared with the equipment I had.”

An additional problem for the three officers was the absence of firearms back-up; none of the force’s armed response units were close by.

Inside the building was death, injury, fear and chaos.

PC Holden said: “Walking in, I identified the suspect with a bloodied knife in his hand at the top of the stairs, pointed my taser at him and thought this is going to go one of two ways.

“He’s gonna listen to us or he’s gonna fight with us and try and stab us.

“Me and Greg formed a solid wall with our shoulders, walking up the stairs so he couldn’t get past us.

“He was a couple of metres away, within striking distance, and I thought if he does anything to threaten me or any sort of movement I don’t like, he would be tasered immediately.”

Rudakubana was a ‘coward’

Sgt Gillespie, 42, said he’d read media reports suggesting Rudakubana had already decided to give himself up by the time police arrived.

He said: “I disagree with that. I saw him, made eye contact with him, saw his facial expression, saw his body language and the way he moved himself into a position at the top of the stairs, showing us he had a knife.

“He was fronting us, like he was saying ‘I’ve got a knife, what are you going to do about it?’ And I think the second he realised he was looking at two people who weren’t scared of him… all that bravery that he must have summoned up to attack defenceless children… he lost that straightaway and he threw down the knife.

“It’d be hard to paint him as more of a coward than he actually is, but I think that shows a lot. He was all brave to attack children, but the second he saw two men walking towards him, he didn’t want to know.”

But the officers had no idea if Rudakubana had more weapons, so they attacked him and knocked him to the ground.

PCSO Parry ended up on top of the suspect.

He said: “Through adrenaline I just kind of put him on his front to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere until other colleagues arrived.

“I was trying to alert anyone else hiding in the building that everything had, hopefully, now stopped and we would deal with them as best we could and make sure they were safe.”

Read more:
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In January, Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, admitted the murders of seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar who was nine.

He also admitted the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults. He was jailed for life with a minimum of 52 years to serve.

Bravery award is ‘bittersweet’

At his sentencing, the judge said that if he hadn’t been stopped he would have gone on to kill all 26 children at the dance class.

“By the time we got the call I think it was already too late to save two of the victims,” said Sgt Gillespie.

“But there was an adult, one of the dance teachers, who was shielding another child in the toilet, within arm’s distance from him and I don’t think he realised.

“If he had known they were there I’m sure he would have tried to attack them, so it’s a good job we got there when we did because we potentially saved them from being injured or killed.”

Before winning last night’s accolade, PCSO Parry summed up the trio’s thoughts about their bravery award nomination.

He said: “It’s bittersweet. I feel proud being nominated, but it comes off the back of such a horrific incident.

“It’s hard to explain. It’s good to have the recognition from your peers and colleagues, but in my eyes it’s not like a celebration.”

70 officers from around England and Wales were nominated for the Police Federation national bravery awards.

The threat of physical attacks by Iran on people living in the UK has increased “significantly” since 2022, according to a new report by parliament’s intelligence watchdog.

Iran poses a “wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat” to the UK, according to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

It also said Iran’s intelligence services were “willing and able – often through third party agents – to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK”.

The report said there have been 15 murder or kidnap attempts against British citizens or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022 and August 2023.

Sky News has approached the Iranian embassy for a comment.

The report authors add: “Whilst Iran’s activity appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China, Iran poses a wide-ranging threat to UK national security, which should not be underestimated: it is persistent and crucially – unpredictable.”

The committee also says that while the threat is often focused on dissidents and other opponents to the regime, there is also an increased threat to Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.

The report warns that while Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon, it has taken steps towards that goal.

It found that Iran had been “broadly compliant” with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed at limiting its nuclear ambitions.

But since Donald Trump withdrew from that deal in 2018, the report said the nuclear threat had increased and Tehran “had the capability to arm in a relatively short period”.

The UK government is also accused of “fire-fighting” rather than developing a real understanding of Iran.

The report says: “The government’s policy on Iran has suffered from a focus on crisis management, driven by concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, to the exclusion of other issues.

“As one of our expert witnesses told the committee: ‘Strategy is not a word that I think has crossed the lips of policy makers for a while, certainly not in relation to Iran’.”

The committee concluded its evidence-taking in August 2023, the result of two years of work, but the report authors say their conclusions “remain relevant”.

But the report authors questioned whether UK sanctions against individuals would “in practice deliver behavioural change. Or in fact unhelpfully push Iran towards China”.

The committee also said the British government should consider proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), although some argue it would limit the UK’s ability to talk to and influence Iran.

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Responding to the report, a UK government spokesperson said: “The government will take action wherever necessary to protect national security, which is a foundation of our plan for change.

“We have already placed Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and introduced further sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Iran, bringing the total number of sanctions to 450.”

British security services say Tehran uses criminal proxies to carry out its work in Britain.

In December, two Romanians were charged after a journalist working for a Persian language media organisation in London was stabbed in the leg. In May, three Iranian men appeared in court charged with assisting Iran’s foreign intelligence service and plotting violence against journalists.

Earlier this year, the UK government said it would require the Iranian state to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK, because of what it called increasingly aggressive activity.

The first thing you notice when immigration officers stop a possible illegal moped delivery driver is the speed in which the suspect quickly taps on their mobile.

“We’re in their WhatsApp groups – they’ll be telling thousands now that we’re here… so our cover is blown,” the lead immigration officer tells me.

“It’s like a constant game of cat and mouse.”

Twelve Immigration Enforcement officers, part of the Home Office, are joining colleagues from Avon and Somerset Police in a crackdown on road offences and migrants working illegally.

The West of England and Wales has seen the highest number of arrests over the last year for illegal workers outside of London.

“It is a problem… we’re tackling it,” Murad Mohammed, from Immigration Enforcement, says. He covers all the devolved nations.

“This is just one of the operations going on around the country, every day of the week, every month of the year.”

Just outside the Cabot Circus shopping complex, we stop a young Albanian man who arrived in the UK on the back of a truck.

He’s on an expensive and fast-looking e-bike, with a new-looking Just Eat delivery bag.

He says he just uses it for “groceries” – but the officer isn’t buying it. He’s arrested, but then bailed instantly.

We don’t know the specifics of his case, but one officer tells me this suspected offence won’t count against his asylum claim.

Such is the scale of the problem – the backlog, loopholes and the complexity of cases – that trying to keep on top of it feels impossible.

This is one of many raids happening across the UK as part of what the government says is a “blitz” targeting illegal working hotspots.

Angela Eagle, the border security and asylum minister, joins the team for an hour at one of Bristol’s retail parks, scattered with fast food chains and, therefore, delivery bikes.

She says arrests for illegal working are up over the last year by 51% from the year before, to more than 7,000.

“If we find you working, you can lose access to the hotel or the support you have [been] given under false pretences,” she said.

“We are cracking down on that abuse, and we intend to keep doing so.”

There are reports that asylum seekers can rent legitimate delivery-driver accounts within hours of arriving in the country – skipping employment legality checks.

Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat all told Sky News they’re continuing to strengthen the technology they use to remove anyone working illegally.

But a new Border Security Bill, working its way through Parliament, could see companies fined £60,000 for each illegal worker discovered, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years.

“I had them all in to see me last week and I told them in no uncertain terms that we take a very tough line on this kind of abuse and they’ve got to change their systems so they can drive it out and off their platforms,” the minister tells me.

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The gig economy – so prevalent in every city – creates another incentive for those wanting to risk their lives coming to the UK illegally.

More than 20,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel to the UK in 2025 – a record number at this point of the year.

For some of those who arrive, a bike and a phone provide a way to repay debts to gang masters.

There were eight arrests today in Bristol, one or two taken into custody, but it was 12 hours of hard work by a dozen immigration officers and the support of the police.

As two mopeds are pushed onto a low-loader, you can’t help but feel, despite the best intentions, that at the moment, this is a losing battle.