The state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls, admits Sir Keir

THE killer of three girls in Southport was repeatedly flagged up to multiple agencies "which failed to identify the terrible risk”.

- Paul Jeeves and Chris Riches

Axel Rudakubana, 18, below, yesterday admitted three counts of murder at Liverpool Crown Court. Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, died after a knife attack at a Taylor Swiftthemed dance class.

Rudakubana had been referred to the Prevent anti-terror scheme three times when he was 13 and 14. He also had contact with the police, courts and social services along with mental health workers. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said yesterday "those agencies failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed" as she announced a public inquiry into the case which sparked widespread rioting last summer.

Rudakubana was referred to the Government's counter-terror programme after he used a school computer to research class shootings.

Experts ruled there was no risk, and the aspiring actor - who starred in a Doctor Who sketch for Children In Need - was said not to be driven by a terrorist ideology. He was referred twice more in 2021 after he viewed explicit material about the 2017 London terror attacks.

Prevent again failed to identify a critical risk, leaving him free to scour the web at his home in Banks, Lancs, for material that is believed to have further twisted his mind.

It has also emerged that, a week before he burst into the class in The Hart Space in Southport at midday on July 29 with an 8in kitchen knife, his father stopped his son from going to his old school armed with a blade.