'I'm glad I could help them'

Inquiry hears of the devastating toll on Southport survivors, including girl stabbed 33 times after trying to shield friends

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

Parents have revealed how their seven-year-old daughter, who survived more than 33 stab wounds, crouched over to shield her friends as children were caught in a "stampede" trying to escape the Southport knife attack.

The brave girl has told her mother, "I'm glad I could help them" as she relived details of the traumatic day last July, a public inquiry into the tragedy heard.

She and other survivors have been left struggling with panic attacks and flashbacks as they try to rebuild their lives after Axel Rudakubana, then 17, launched a rampage at a Taylor Swiftthemed holiday dance class.

The attack claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and left eight more girls and two adults wounded.

The killer, who will simply be referred to as "the perpetrator" or "AR" in hearings out of respect to victims and their families, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 52 years.

The mother of the survivor, who cannot be named and is known only as C1, told the second day of the public inquiry into the atrocity how her daughter desperately tried to help her friends.

She shielded them at the top of the stairs before helping them to escape the Hart Space studio, only to be pulled back inside by the knifeman, who rained down yet more blows which felt like punches.

In a powerful statement read to the hearing at Liverpool Town Hall, she said her daughter recalls the class rushing out of a narrow doorway and downstairs, following their wounded teacher, Leanne Lucas.

"She describes it as a stampede," she said. "In the chaos, she was knocked over and found herself trapped and huddled with two other children at the top of the stairs. She talks quietly of how she put her arms around the girls as he began to attack them.