How violence-obsessed boy unleashed dance class hell

Axel Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to murdering three girls

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

When Axel Rudakubana climbed into a taxi last summer, the country had no clue of the horrors he was about to unleash on the town of Southport – or the resulting backlash that would see riots erupt across the UK.

Wearing a green hoodie, a surgical face mask and armed with a kitchen knife, the 17-year-old travelled five miles from his family home to the Hart Space, where he ambushed a class of girls aged between six and 11 who were starting their summer holidays at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Merseyside.

The frenzied attack, launched at around 11.50am on 29 July, was described as like a scene from a disaster film when he targeted the screaming girls while a teacher and a grandfather nearby bravely tried to defend them.

Two of the girls, Bebe King, aged six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, were declared dead shortly after, while Alice da Silva Aguiar, aged nine, later succumbed to her injuries in hospital. Eight more children suffered stab wounds and five were left in critical condition.

Yesterday, the violence-obsessed teen pleaded guilty to murdering the three girls. He had been due to stand trial at Liverpool Crown Court, having denied the charges last year, but dramatically changed his plea on the first day of the trial. He also pleaded guilty to 10 charges of attempted murder, as well as producing the deadly poison ricin and possession of a PDF file containing al-Qaeda material found by police.