Cops who stopped killer were unaware of THREE referrals

SOUTHPORT INQUIRY HEARS POLICE OFFICERS TOOK ARMED TEENAGER HOME

- By PATRICK EDRICH

POLICE officers who found the Southport killer on a bus armed with a knife did not know he had been referred three times to a counter terrorism programme.

Lancashire Constabulary officers found Axel Rudakubana, then aged 15, on a bus with a kitchen knife stashed in his pocket on March 17, 2022.

But the two probationary officers treated the case as a mental health episode and returned Rudakubana to his parents without arresting him, despite the teenager telling them he had the knife because he wanted to stab people and had a desire to make poison in the future. At the time he made the comments, the teenager, who had convictions after assaulting a boy with a sharpened hockey stick, had taken delivery of castor bean seeds and scientific equipment to begin his plans to make the deadly toxin ricin.

The ongoing Southport Inquiry heard on Tuesday that the officers who dealt with the case were not aware that Rudakubana had been referred to the counter terrorism-led Prevent programme on three different occasions after displaying a fascination with extreme violence including school shootings and beheadings and conflicts involving the IRA and MIS, and Israel and Palestine.

Giving evidence to the ongoing inquiry sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Victoria Evans, who is the senior national coordinator for Prevent, said it was not common practice for Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) to place markers on people who had been assessed for the programme.