Police chief 'extremely sorry' force missed earlier opportunity to arrest Southport killer

A SENIOR Lancashire police officer said the force was 'extremely sorry' after they missed a 'very serious opportunity' to uncover the Southport killer's depravity years before his dance party attack.

- By PATRICK EDRICH

Lancashire Constabulary Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) Mark Winstanley told the ongoing Southport Inquiry that officers should have arrested the then 15-year-old after he was found with a knife on a bus on March 17, 2022.

Instead officers treated the case as a mental health episode and returned Rudakubana to his home address.

While in the car on the journey back, Rudakubana told the two officers, PCs David Fairclough and Eve Rhodes, that he had the knife because he wanted to stab people and wanted to make poison in the future.

The inquiry heard this week that at the time of the incident, Rudakubana, who is being referred to in the inquiry proceedings as AR, had already purchased seeds to make deadly poison ricin and had downloaded an academic study of the Al-Qaeda training manual. ACC Winstanley confirmed if Rudakubana had been arrested, a search of the teen's house would have likely found the illegal materials.

Senior inquiry counsel Nicholas Moss KC said: "This was two years prior to his attack, the fact that officers on the ground didn't have that full picture, but it would have led to an arrest and search if they had that full picture, must mean this was a very serious missed opportunity to identify and address the risks posed by AR."