'Just my best friend. It was an honour to be her mum'

Southport families pay heartfelt tributes to their daughters

- ALEXANDER BUTLER

The families of two schoolgirls murdered in the Southport knife attack have spoken out for the first time since their deaths. Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were all killed in the frenzied ambush on a Taylor Swiftthemed dance class in the Merseyside town last year.

Bebe and Elise’s parents have paid tribute to them – to make sure they are remembered for their personalities – in the wake of their killer Axel Rudakubana’s sentencing to 52 years in jail just over two weeks ago.

“Everyone says it, don’t they,” Elsie’s mother Jenni Stancombe told The Sunday Times, “that they’re one of a kind? But she truly was.”