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Head of Southport attacker's former school tells inquiry he was 'building up to something'
The head teacher of the Southport attacker's former school has told a public inquiry she felt like he was "building up to something".
Joanne Hodson, head of The Acorns School in Ormskirk, said she had a "visceral sense of dread" that he would do something. "I felt like something was going to happen and there was a level of agitation with direct challenges to staff, the way he was with other pupils.
I felt like every day it was building and building and building," she told the inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall. Axel Rudakubana, then aged 17, killed six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar and attempted to murder 10 others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on 29 July last year.
He was later jailed for a minimum of 52 years. Rudakubana, referred to during the public inquiry as AR, came to Ms Hodson's school after he was permanently excluded from the Range High School, in Formby, due to taking knives to school in October 2019.
'Devoid of any remorse' Ms Hodson said she first met Rudakubana at his admissions meeting for the Acorns, when she asked him why he had taken a knife to his former school. "He looked me in the eyes and said 'to use it'.
This is the only time in my career that a pupil has said this to me or behaved in a manner so devoid of any remorse," she said. "What also surprised me was that AR's parents did not flinch at this comment." She said the parents saw Rudakubana "as the victim" and believed he had taken the knife to school as a response to being bullied.
His parents thought he was a "good boy" who never did anything wrong and that "any issues were someone else's fault.
Amir Nisi
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