A girl who was stabbed in the Southport attack has told Sky News how she thought she was going to die that day.
Warning: Some readers may find this content distressing
It is exactly a year since Axel Rudakubana killed three girls and attempted to murder eight others at a summer holiday Taylor Swift-themed dance event in the seaside town.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in the back and the arm after going to the class with her younger sister.
She is now campaigning for children to have mandatory first aid training at school in response to the growth of knife crime.
She said she clearly remembers what happened that day.
Flowers and tributes near the scene of the attack a year ago. Pic: PA
“Some of the girls were sat down in a circle making bracelets with the teachers, and a couple of them were getting up to get beads. I was standing between two tables and he came through the doors.
“He stabbed a little girl in front of me and then came for me and stabbed my arm. I turned and then he stabbed my back, even though I didn’t feel it at the time.
“There was a bunch of girls huddled around so I just started pushing them down the stairs, telling them to get out and run.
“I was thinking ‘Where’s my sister?’ and ‘We need to get out’.”
She and many of the other victims ran to the house of a neighbour for shelter. “I just thought that I was going to die,” she said.
Killer ‘looked possessed’
The girl said she can clearly picture Rudakubana that day.
“What I remember most about him is his eyes. They just didn’t look human, they looked possessed. It was kind of like a dream and you’re on a movie set and watching yourself go through it and make these decisions.
“It’s just kind of like adrenaline. People like to think they know what they’d do in that situation but, in reality, you don’t until you’re in it.”
Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in the attack
Six-year-old Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, who was seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar died in the attack. It is something she finds difficult to talk about.
“I don’t think I can express how I feel about it,” the girl said. “A lot of anger and sadness.”
In January, Rudakubana was jailed for life and must serve a minimum of 52 years before he can be considered for release.
The chairman of the public inquiry into the atrocity called the attack “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
Carrying knives ‘disgusting’
The girl who survived has now launched a campaign, supported by a clothing range called “Go Anywhere, Be Anything” to raise funds, to improve the ability of schoolchildren to help in the event of knife attacks.
“Everyone that’s going out and carrying knives is getting younger and younger,” she said. “And to think that it’s people my age is like disgusting.
“I just want to try and do the best I can to let people know that it’s not okay to do that and that they need to think about what they’re doing and the risks and how they’re harming themselves and other people.”
Her sister, who was also there that day, helped design “Go Anywhere, Be Anything”.
Read more:
Missed chances to stop Rudakubana
‘Terrorism has changed’, says PM
A three-minute silence will be held in Southport at 3pm to mark one year on from the attack. In an open letter to the community, Sefton Council wrote: “This period is incredibly hard for the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie and all of those children and adults injured or who suffered lifelong psychological impact of witnessing the attack, and we acknowledge the huge impact on their lives, too.
“We must not forget the local people who rushed to support and to our emergency responders. They all remain always in our thoughts.”
It is a sentiment shared by the survivor.
“You live in fear every day that it could happen again,” she said.
“Physically I’m getting better every day and healing. Obviously, my scars stay as a reminder but everyone from that day is going to have mental scars forever.”
The scale of cheap Chinese e-commerce imports flown into Britain without paying any tariffs has become clearer following a Sky News investigation into this new multi-billion pound phenomenon.
We have uncovered the first official estimate of the value of so-called “de minimis” imports into Britain, ahead of an official inquiry into whether this legal clause – which excludes packages worth less than £135 from paying customs duties – should be allowed to continue.
Companies like Shein and Temu have become big players in British retail, not to mention elsewhere around the world, by manufacturing cheap products in China and then posting them directly to consumers, benefiting from the de minimis rules.
Clothing manufacturers in the UK claim that de minimis makes it nearly impossible to compete with these Chinese competitors, raising questions about the viability of domestic textile and apparel production.
However, economists argue that the main beneficiaries of the policy to exclude cheap imports from customs are lower-income households, since it allows them to spend less on their shopping. Removing it, they say, would disproportionately affect poorer families.
The government has committed to an inquiry into the rules, which are also being changed in the EU and the US, but up until now there has been no official estimate of its scale.
According to HM Revenue and Customs data released to Sky News following a Freedom of Information request, the total declared trade value of de minimis imports into the UK in the last fiscal year (2024-25) was £5.9bn.
That was a 53% increase on the previous year (£3.9bn), underlining the scale of growth of e-commerce imports into the UK.
While it is hard to gauge how much revenue this means the Treasury has forgone, an illustrative 20% tariff on flows of that order could raise more than £1bn.
While that sum alone would not fill the fiscal black hole faced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the coming budget, it would nonetheless be nearly enough to pay for the government’s recent U-turn on winter fuel allowances.
Sky has also obtained the first television access deep into the supply chain, helping bring those goods into the UK, as it boarded a flight that had just travelled from Chongqing to Bournemouth Airport.
We filmed inside the belly of a plane belonging to European Cargo, one of a number of air cargo firms booming as a result of these trade flows.
Read more:
The rarely examined trade clause about to become a very big deal
UK city’s clothing industry in crisis
The untold story about de minimis is that it hasn’t just had an impact on shopping habits in the UK, or for that matter, the textiles manufacturing sector – it has also changed patterns of distribution.
Struggling regional airports that never saw their passenger numbers recover after the pandemic are now re-establishing themselves as hubs for cargo.
European Cargo is now the single biggest airline at Bournemouth Airport, despite not carrying a single passenger.
Other regional airports like East Midlands Airport and Prestwick in Scotland are seeing rapid growth in flows of trade.
All of which raises the stakes for the government’s inquiry into the de minimis system.
At present, there is no timeline for its decision, but removing the clause would have far-reaching effects across the economy.
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