Southport The systemic breakdowns that failed to stop tragedy

Of all the professionals who studied Axel Rudakubana before his murderous attack in Southport last summer, the notes of a rookie police officer in 2019 may have been the most prescient.

- Josh Halliday

The actions of Rudakubana, then aged 13, showed "potential for huge escalation", wrote PC Alex McNamee after spending just 20 minutes with the teenager when he admitted taking a knife into school to attack a bully. The risk, he wrote, was "high".

Yet by July last year, six days before his knife rampage, Rudakubana had been discharged from mental health services after five years with a perfunctory report that concluded: "Poses risk to others: None." The multiple failures that left Rudakubana, then 17, able to murder three young girls - Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven-have been scrutinised by a public inquiry that concluded on Thursday. The inquiry chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, is expected to deliver recommendations to the government by spring.

After nine weeks of evidence from more than 100 witnesses, the Guardian can now identify some of the key ways in which Rudakubana fell through the gaps.

Over two days of astonishing testimony, Alphonse Rudakubana, the killer's father, admitted knowing that his son had amassed an arsenal of weapons - including knives, a bow and arrow, a sledgehammer and a jerry can - and that he feared his son was planning to attack others. Yet he did not alert the police, or any other agency, because he was worried his son would be taken away.

Alphonse, 50, told the inquiry he was left terrified, abused and repeatedly violently attacked by his teenage son. Their relationship disintegrated to a point where Alphonse was too scared to curb his son's troubling internet activity or stop his orders of knives.

The inquiry heard how Alphonse and his wife, Laetitia Muzayire, had sought help for their son as early as April 2019, when his troubles began aged 12. But their relationship with professionals deteriorated as Rudakubana turned more violent.