Brother of Southport killer asks if attack could have been prevented

The brother of the Southport killer has asked a public inquiry to determine whether officials could have stopped his sibling causing “the most immense pain, anguish and grief”.

- Josh Halliday North of England editor

In his first public comments since the attack last July, Dion Rudakubana said his younger brother, Axel, had become “progressively more isolated” after being expelled from school in October 2019.

It also emerged yesterday that the teenage killer had been discharged from mental health services six days before the mass stabbing.

In a written statement to the Southport inquiry, Dion asked the chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, to explore “whether more could have been done” by social services and other agencies to prevent the atrocity. His legal team said in the document: “To this end, Dion wholeheartedly supports the inquiry’s aim to identify lessons which will minimise the prospect of such harm being caused in the future.”

The inquiry is examining how such a troubled teenager with a known obsession with knives and extreme violence - and who was referred three times to the counter-radicalisation scheme Prevent - was able to carry out what Fulford called “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.