A father stopped the Southport killer from going to a former school a week before the attack

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was prevented from returning to the school he attended for a week before he stabbed three girls to death in July last year, the BBC understands.

Rudakubana’s father begged the taxi driver to take him to Range High School, from which he was expelled five years ago, on 22 July.

He was wearing the same hooded sweatshirt and surgical mask he wore during the attack one week later.

Rudakubana has been referred to the government’s Prevent terrorism program three times, between 2019 and 2021, because of his propensity for violence.

On Monday, an 18-year-old boy admitted to stabbing and killing three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.

He also pleaded guilty to a number of charges including attempting to kill eight children and two adults, producing the natural poison, ricin, and possessing an al-Qaeda training manual – a terrorist offence.

Despite this his case has never been considered terrorism-related by the police as he does not appear to be following an ideology, such as Islamism or racial hatred, and instead appears to be motivated by an interest in extreme violence.

The home secretary launched a public inquiry into the attack to “find out the truth about what happened and what needs to be changed”.

Yvette Cooper said “independent responses” were needed from Prevent and other agencies that met with Rudakubana.

A week before this happened, Rudakubana booked a taxi under the name Simon to go to Range High School, on the last day of school, but his father ran out of the house to mediate.

On July 29 he left his home before ordering a taxi with the same name to take him to the dance floor where he committed the murder.

After pleading guilty, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) described him as a “young man with a penchant for death and violence” and said he had shown no remorse.

Rudakubana has been described as having a volatile personality, anger issues, and a tendency to act violently.

He attended Range High School in Formby where he started having problems with violence in year 9.

Some readers remember him as having a fascination with oppressive figures including Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler. You are also known to have received information about the IRA.

Rudakubana was expelled from school in October 2019, at the age of 13, after which he returned to school in December 2019 carrying a hockey stick and hit a student, breaking his wrist. He had to be restrained by the teacher.

After this, he attended The Acorns School, which provides vocational education for those with additional needs, and was then enrolled at Presfield High School & Specialist College.

He only went to sixth form there for a few days and was treated a lot with home visits. Sometimes the school would ask the police to be there when they visited.

The Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership said Rudakubana “struggled to return to school” following his expulsion from Range High.

It also said Lancashire Constabulary responded to five calls from his home address, between October 2019 and May 2022, about concerns about his behaviour.

It emerged last August that he had “autism spectrum disorder” and was “unwilling to leave the house and interact with family for long periods of time”.

Rudakubana called Childline many times when he was young, and finally told the service that he was going to take a knife to school because of racial abuse.

This is one of the incidents that led to his expulsion from Range High School.

The NSPCC said Rudakubana’s last call to Childline was “serious enough to breach the limit” which led to Childline notifying local authorities of its concerns in 2019.

A spokesman for the NSPCC said the attack was a tragedy and said it was “vital” that any review following the court case examines “all the circumstances and reasons that contributed to this terrible attack” to ensure similar tragedies can be prevented in the future.

Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents in 2006, and moved to Southport in 2013.

She took acting classes at the Pauline Quirk Academy and appeared in a promotional video for BBC Children in Need in 2018, which has since become unrelated to her.

The BBC removed the video from its websites after the Southport attack.

Neighbors in the street where he and his family live in Banks, West Lancashire, about 9 miles from Southport, told the BBC that police had visited the home several times in the months leading up to the Southport attack.

Minutes before she left for dance class, Rudakubana is thought to have searched social media X about the 2024 Sydney church attack, where Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and five others were stabbed.

Rudakubana’s internet browsing history on the laptop was quickly deleted before he logged out.

A doorbell camera caught him loitering outside his home, before he caught a taxi to a dance floor where he was to be stabbed.

Bebe King, age six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, age seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, age nine, were all killed.

The police would go on to find another knife and the deadly poison ricin in his house, as well as documents about Nazi Germany, genocide in Rwanda, wars in Chechnya and Somalia, punishments in slave plantations, and remote-controlled car bombs in Rudakubana’s vehicles. .

A PDF file of an al-Qaeda training manual was also found.

Images relating to the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Korea, as well as images of knives and machetes, were also found on the tablets.

Initially, Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the charges, after he refused to speak during the trial, but he pleaded guilty on Monday, the first day of his trial.

He is expected to be sentenced on Thursday and is expected to be sentenced to life in prison.

However, he cannot be sentenced to life in prison for his crimes because he was 17 years old when he committed the crimes.