Hard to comprehend devastation says officer

A SENIOR police officer who coordinated the response to the Southport mass stabbing said he found it “difficult to understand” how one person could cause so much devastation.

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Chief Inspector Andrew Hughes was one of two force incident managers (FIMs) on duty on July 29 last year when the first 999 calls reporting a “boy with a knife [and] multiple casualties” were received by police.

Ch Insp Hughes told the ongoing Southport Inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, that he made the decision to deploy armed response vehicles to the Hart Street scene but, due to the distance they had to travel, also instructed first responders to “approach with caution”.

The inquiry heard how Sergeant Gregory Gillespie and PC Luke Holden, armed with a Taser, detained teenage Killer Axel Rudakubana inside the Hart Space, along with the assistance of community support officer Timothy Parry.

Ch Ins Hughes told the inquiry that armed response officers continued to the scene after Rudakubana, who is only being referred to as AR in inquiry proceedings, was detained.

The inquiry heard that armed officers arrived on the scene at 12.15pm, around 19 minutes after the first police responders had arrived.