Southport killer was known to services that failed – as former social worker warns over ‘holes in the system’
When the police arrived at the scene of horror in Southport last summer, the teenager holding the knife was someone they had been called about many times before.
From the age of 13, Axel Rudakubana had been on the radar of police, safeguarding services, mental health teams and Prevent, the counterterrorism programme.
Axel Rudakubana pictured several years ago
His obsession with mass murder was known about. The risk he posed was clear.
Yet there was nothing to stop him going to a dance class, murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and attempting to murder many more.
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‘Our lives went with them – he took us too’
The timeline of contact with the authorities reveals Rudakubana had not slipped through the net – he was in the system. It failed.
The public inquiry that will now take place needs to examine why.
‘Limited options for social workers’
Dr Ciaran Murphy, a former social worker and member of the Association of Child Protection Professionals, believes services designed to protect children are now facing more cases where children are themselves the risk.
“That’s an area where we need to evolve,” he said. “There’s an increasing occurrence of referrals being made in which parents are afraid of their children in terms of violence and mental health.”
Dr Ciaran Murphy
He said options for social workers are limited. “You’d still be thinking about the child protection plan, you’d still be thinking about a strategy meeting,” he said. “But ultimately, social workers cannot detain children.
“The obvious answers are multi-agency communication, multi-agency work, particularly with the police and programmes like Prevent. But then when you do that, you start to see some of the holes in the system.”
“In extreme cases, they can apply for a secure order for a child in which a child is placed in secure accommodation,” Dr Murphy explained, but he said they are “very difficult to obtain, partly because it’s so costly, partly because it’s so draconian”.
The orders have to be granted by the family courts and only apply to children under the age of 16.
Rudakubana’s multiple contact with police
The police were first alerted to Rudakubana when he took a knife into school in 2019. It led to his exclusion, and referrals to the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).
But he returned to the school months later with a knife in his bag and attacked a pupil with a hockey stick. He pleaded guilty to assault and a youth referral order was imposed.
Between 2019 and 2021 he was referred three times to Prevent. The first referral was for researching school shootings during an IT class. Another referral was made when a teacher found he’d been reading about the London Bridge terror attack. However, he was not deemed a terrorism risk.
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Southport attack: ‘Investigation not yet over’
Between 2019 and 2023 he received mental health care at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust but “stopped engaging” in February of that year.
In 2021, Rudabukana was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Later that year, following reports of incidents at home, he stopped attending school.
In 2022, his mother reported him missing and police found him on a bus carrying a knife. Officers were called by the driver because he was refusing to pay. He was returned home and his mother was given advice on how to secure knives.
Four of the calls to the police about him in the years before the attack were made by his own parents.
Read more:
Rudakubana received second longest sentence in history – No 10
Attorney general to review ‘unduly lenient’ sentence
‘They often don’t fit into any particular box’
Dr Duncan Harding
Dr Duncan Harding, a consultant adolescent forensic psychiatrist, said “a case like this just highlights how systems have to be made as robust as possible, to try and pick up people who perhaps are acting in a lone way with extreme ideologies. Perhaps ideologies don’t fit into any particular box”.
“Working with young people, who present with perhaps mental health difficulties, perhaps neurodiversity, criminal behaviours. I’ve worked with many young people who fit into that category, and they often don’t fit into any particular box. What that can mean is that they might fall under the threshold of any one particular service.”
He added: “I think that when something dreadful happens, when something absolutely dreadful happens that shakes society in this way, we have to look at the systems, we have to look at things like thresholds.”
There is consensus that more should have been done to stop Rudakubana.
Finding the cracks in a system that failed will be the task of the public inquiry.
Counter-terrorism police are investigating after an incident involving a crossbow and a firearm left two women injured in Leeds.
Police were called to Otley Road at 2.47pm on Saturday to reports of a “serious incident involving a man seen with weapons”, West Yorkshire Police said.
Officers arrived at the scene to find two women injured – and a 38-year-old man with a self-inflicted injury. All three were taken to hospital, with the man held under arrest, but their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
“Two weapons have been recovered from the scene, which were a crossbow and a firearm,” Counter Terrorism Policing North East said in a statement.
The incident happened on the ‘Otley Run’ pub crawl, with one venue saying it was closed for the evening due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
Officers guard one of the crime scenes
Officers inside the cordon in Leeds
Counter Terrorism Policing’s statement added: “Due to the circumstances surrounding the incident, Counter Terrorism Policing North East have taken responsibility for leading the investigation with the support of West Yorkshire Police.
“Extensive enquiries continue to establish the full circumstances and explore any potential motivation.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described it as a “serious violent incident” and said she was being kept updated by police.
“Thank you to the police and emergency services for their swift response,” she said. “My thoughts are with the victims and all those affected by this attack.”
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Wrexham AFC have been promoted for the third season in a row.
The North Wales-based side has gone from the National League to the Championship in just three seasons, under its Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
Wrexham were second in the table and had a run of eight games unbeaten ahead of their match against Charlton Athletic on Saturday, which they won 3-0.
Wrexham’s James McClean lifts the League One trophy. Pic: PA
Wrexham’s Dan Scarr celebrates with the fans on the pitch after Wrexham won promotion to the Championship. Pic: PA
It is the first time any club has been promoted for three consecutive seasons within the top five tiers of English football.
The third oldest association football club in the world, Wrexham AFC was bought by Reynolds and McElhenney in 2020, and has since been the subject of a Disney+ documentary, Welcome To Wrexham.
Reynolds, wearing a Wrexham sweatshirt, and McElhenney were pictured celebrating each goal, and after the game, as the fans came onto the pitch at the SToK Cae Ras (Racecourse Ground) to celebrate the victory with the players.
Wrexham co-owners Rob McElhenney (L) and Ryan Reynolds and Ryan’s wife Blake Lively, before the match. Pic: PA
Both stars came onto the pitch after the supporters returned to the stands.
Speaking to Sky Sports, McElhenney praised those behind the scenes, referring to “so many that don’t get the credit they deserve, people who aren’t talked about”.
Reynolds said bringing success back to the club “seemed like an impossible dream” when they arrived in North Wales in 2020.
Wrexham’s Sam Smith celebrates in front of the fans after Wrexham won promotion to the Championship. Pic: PA
He put the three promotions down to “the coaching staff, the greatest dressing room” and an “all for one, one for all” attitude throughout the club, adding he was “speechless with their commitment and their emotion”.
As for the mouth-watering prospect of another promotion to the promised land of the Premier League, the pair agreed it was “for tomorrow”, before ending the interview with a joint mic-drop.
Veteran striker Steven Fletcher said, “as soon as I came to this club, I knew it was something special. We want to go again. We’ll reset in the summer, take a break and go again”.
“It has been a success.”
Just Stop Oil (JSO) insists it’s been “successful” – as its members ceremoniously hang up their orange high-vis vests during a march in central London.
Since the group formed three years ago, it’s drawn attention and criticism for its colourful, controversial protests, which ranged from disrupting sporting events to throwing soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and climbing on gantries over the M25. It sprayed orange paint over Stonehenge, and cost police forces tens of millions of pounds.
Those days are now behind it; to the relief of many.
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77 year old JSO activist recalled to prison
As a few hundred activists marched through London on Saturday, blocking roads as they went; taxi drivers blared their horns and football fans shouted abuse from the pavement.
The PA News Agency filmed the moment a white minivan seemed to drive towards a group of protesters blocking the road.
Protesters shouted “I’m being pushed back!” to police, while the driver could be heard shouting “What about my right to get home?” to the officers gathered.
But JSO never set out to be popular. And it believes its tactics – though hated – have been successful; thanks to the new Labour government’s commitment to not issue new oil or gas exploration licences.
That’s why, it says, its ceasing direct action.
JSO hangs up its high-vis jackets in central London on Saturday
A washing line of high-vis jackets signifies JSO’s disbanding
“This moment marks the success of the JSO campaign – our demand was to end new oil and gas licences and that is now government policy.
“As a result of which four billion barrels of oil are being kept under the North Sea. The campaign has reached a natural end.”
Dr Oscar Berglund, senior lecturer in international public and social policy, disagrees that JSO is disappearing because it’s been “successful”.
He told Sky News policing strength and public perception might have more to do with it.
“They have very low levels of popularity. About 17% of the British population are kind of broadly supportive of what Just Stop Oil do. And that’s too low to recruit.
“It’s difficult to recruit members to something that is that unpopular, and then that a lot of people for good reason I think have kind of stopped believing in that kind of disruption as a means to achieve meaningful change.”
Group triggers specific new protest laws
One thing it did change is the law.
Policing commentator Graham Wettone tells us: “Obstruction of the highway, obstruction of rail networks for example, these are specific offences now.
“It’s given the police more tactics, more methods, more offences they can consider, even stopping and searching somebody who may have something to either lock themselves on or glue themselves to something.”
A JSO activist holds a picture of an imprisoned colleague
Emma Smart was held in prison for her activism with both Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil.
“The high-vis might be going away,” she tells me, “but we aren’t.”
“These people aren’t going anywhere, we are still committed, dedicated, terrified by the failings of this government and governments around the world.”
JSO activists throw orange paint at van Gogh’s sunflowers
Orange smoke set off by JSO protesters at Stonehenge
She hopes for a time of reflection before it returns in a new form but says the need for climate activism is stronger than ever.
She also believes that while most people dislike JSO tactics, it still raises awareness of the cause and might even push people to more moderate campaign groups.
Just Stop Oil came behind other, similarly controversial climate campaign groups like Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion, and as it says goodbye, its disruptive methods have been seized upon by other organisations like the Pro-Palestinian Youth Justice.
The infamous Just Stop Oil orange vests might be going away, but the individual activists, their cause and campaign tactics feel here to stay.
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