Southport victims' parents say killer's parents 'knew and ignored risk he posed to public'

The families of the three girls murdered in the Southport attack have claimed the parents of killer Axel Rudakubana "knew and ignored the risk he posed to the public".

They also pointed to "multiple errors, omissions and fatal misjudgements" by mental health services, social services and police. The claims were made as the families outlined for the first time the issues they want the public inquiry, being held at Liverpool Town Hall, to examine over the next seven weeks.

Rudakubana's brother Dion said he wanted the inquiry to examine whether his sibling's exclusion from school and transfer to a pupil referral unit had increased his sense of isolation from friends and family. The inquiry had previously heard about a series of efforts made by Rudakubana's parents to get him help with his mental health in the years before the attack but also outlined that they intercepted two machetes delivered to the house and were struggling to deal with their son's violence in the home.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were fatally stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed class on 29 July last year by Rudakubana, then aged 17, who was jailed earlier this year for a minimum of 52 years. Nicholas Bowen KC, for the three bereaved families, told the inquiry: "It is a visceral conviction that the safeguarding apparatus of the state has failed them and that it was not only public bodies." Rudakubana's family "knew and ignored the risk he posed to the public" as did a taxi driver who drove away after dropping the killer at the Hart Space dance studio, he said.

"But for multiple errors, omissions and fatal misjudgements," Rudakubana - referred to throughout as AR - "would have been seen for who he really was, and, we say, stopped," Mr Bowen said. The families blamed a combination of incompetent diagnosis, inappropriate educational provision, and a lack of action by public bodies.

They highlighted an incident when Rudakubana was reported missing by his parents and found on a bus in March 2022, refusing to pay the fare, with a knife in his possession. 'Failure to join the dots' The police, mental health services and social services "failed to join the dots with his previous offending" which involved an attempt to target a child he claimed was bullying him by taking a knife into assembly at his previous school.

If authorities had joined the dots, it would have been "inevitable" that Rudakubana would have been subjected to a "full and rigorous assessment.