'Arena terror attack was a good battle'

WHAT VIOLENCE-OBSESSED EVIL KILLER TOLD COPS YEARS BEFORE STABBINGS

- By PATRICK EDRICH

Armed police at the Manchester Arena after the explosion

THE Southport killer said the Manchester Arena terrorist attack was “a good battle”, and attacked an innocent child with a sharpened hockey stick after he couldn't find his intended victim.

Axel Rudakubana was referred to the counter terrorism Prevent programme in December 2019 when he was just 13, due to his fascination with school shootings and comments in school about guns and severed heads.

But while the referral was being analysed, Rudakubana went to his former school, The Range, armed with a sharpened hockey stick and with a knife stashed in his bag, and attacked a pupil on December 11, 2019.

The ongoing Southport Inquiry heard on Thursday that Rudakubana told a mental health practitioner that he intended to kill his target, an alleged bully, but, when he could not find him, instead attacked an innocent boy who he liked, as “he didn’t want to get into trouble for nothing”.

A strategy meeting held six days later heard Rudakubana, who is only being referred to as AR in the proceedings, said he had “won the fight” and made a pre-prepared police statement where he lied about his intentions.

The meeting also heard the teenager had called the Manchester bombing a “good battle” and had searched for US school shootings.

But Police Sergeant Carmen Thompson, the Prevent officer in charge of the case, put this down to “an interest in the media [and] current affairs, enhanced by his autism”.

The officer told the inquiry: “I think again with hindsight it does make you think differently...the conversations that I had with him didn’t leave me feeling really concerned.

“I was concerned in relation to his use of violence and the issues that he was experiencing in relation to bullying... I look back and think maybe I should have probed things a bit more.”