UK: Teen who killed 3 girls at Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England sentenced to over 50 years

LIVERPOOL: A UK judge on Thursday sentenced a self-confessed child killer to life in custody for murdering three young girls in a frenzied stabbing spree at their summer dance class.

“I consider it likely he will never be released,” judge Julian Goose said, adding that Axel Rudakubana, 18, must serve a minimum of 52 years in detention for his “extreme violence”.

“The harm Rudakubana has caused to each family, each child and to the community has been profound and permanent,” the judge told Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England.

Rudakubana had admitted three charges of killing the three girls who died in the attack in Southport - Bebe King, aged six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar.

He also confessed to the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults, as well as possessing a knife when he burst into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July last year.

And he pleaded guilty to producing a biological toxin - ricin - and possessing an Al-Qaeda training manual.

The judge said the violent attack, which Rudakubana unleashed just nine days before his 18th birthday, took just 15 minutes.

“Had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child - all 26 of them,” the judge said.

“He was prevented from murdering more only by the escape of other children.”

After some of the injured girls escaped, Rudakubana “returned to continue his sustained and brutal violence against two of the youngest of those children, stabbing them multiple times,” the judge added.

As the hearing got under way, the court was told he had said “I’m glad they’re dead” as he was held in a custody suite after killing the three girls last July.

Rudakubana has also pleaded guilty to 10 counts of attempted murder and possessing a blade.

And he admitted producing a biological toxin - ricin - and possessing an Al-Qaeda training manual.

Judge Julian Goose warned Rudakubana after his guilty pleas that he faced a long custodial sentence.

Rudakubana’s multiple appearances in court to date have been marked by his uncooperative behaviour, repeatedly refusing to speak and declining to stand in court on Monday, where he muttered “guilty” to each of the charges.

The teenager’s rampage shocked people in the UK.

Viral misinformation that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker triggered anti-immigrant riots in more than a dozen English and Northern Irish towns and cities.

Rudakubana was in fact born in Cardiff to parents of Rwandan origin, and lived in Banks, a village northeast of Southport.

His Christian church-going parents, both ethnic Tutsis, came to Britain in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to UK media.

The attack has not been treated as a terror incident and he was never charged with terrorism offences - prompting criticism from some.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed on Tuesday to update terror legislation “if the law needs to change”, to recognise what he called the new threat of individuals intent on “extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake”.

Meanwhile, interior minister Yvette Cooper announced a public inquiry would probe how police, courts and welfare services “failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed”.

Bebe King, aged six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in the attack in the seaside resort near Liverpool on July 29, 2024.

Ten others were wounded, including eight children, in one of the country’s worst mass stabbings in decades.

“This is a tragedy from which the families involved will never recover,” Andrew Brown, the founder of the Stand Up for Southport community group, told AFP.

“That this atrocity could have been prevented on several occasions but those opportunities were never taken, is devastating,” he said.

The unrest linked to the killings lasted nearly a week.

Rioters attacked police, shops and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as mosques. Hundreds were arrested and charged at the time and over the subsequent months.

Authorities blamed far-right agitators for fuelling the violence, including by sharing misinformation about the attacker.

Following the guilty pleas and the lifting of court reporting restrictions, new information has emerged about Rudakubana.

He had been referred three times to the government’s nationwide anti-extremism scheme, Prevent, over concerns about his obsession with violence.

He had also been excluded from school, with reports suggesting that when he was 13 he was bullied and had started carrying a knife.

Reports said authorities had long known of his interest in atrocities and mass murders after he was found doing research on a school computer.

Starmer branded the apparent decision that Rudakubana did not meet the threshold for intervention by Prevent as “clearly wrong”.