A UK teenager who stabbed 3 girls to death in Southport will be sentenced today

The teenager who killed three girls and injured 10 others when he was attacked with a knife in a dance class in Southport, England, last summer will be sentenced on Thursday.

Judge Julian Goose, who is presiding over the case, told the attacker, Axel Rudakubana, 18, that a life sentence cannot be avoided after pleading guilty on Monday.

Mr. Rudakubana appeared at Liverpool Crown Court wearing a gray sweatshirt, with a blue mask covering his mouth and nose. When the judge asked him to confirm his name, he refused to speak and kept his head in his lap.

But before the sentencing hearing began, the prosecutors were still studying the details of the case against him, Mr. Rudakubana started screaming at the defendant’s port at the back of the room, “I need to talk to the first aid, because I feel sick. .”

The judge noted that medical experts had examined Mr. Rudakubana that morning and decided that he was ready to go to trial. His lawyer told the judge that the defendant had not eaten for several days, and Mr. Rudakubana continued to scream for several minutes.

Judge Goose said: “This trial is conducted by me, not yours, Mr. Rudakubana. Do you understand?” He then ordered that Mr. Rudakubana be removed from the court saying, “I will not make him interfere.”

Since Mr. Rudakubana, who pleaded guilty on Monday, has emerged as a violent teenager, having been on the radar of local authorities for years before the knife attack on July 29 in Southport, the city. north of Liverpool.

After the attack, Britain was rocked by a series of riots as anonymous information about the attacker’s identity spread on social media and messaging apps. False claims that you are an undocumented immigrant or a newly arrived asylum seeker are being promoted by right-wing activists. Mr. Rudakubana is a British citizen who was born in Wales to Rwandan parents.

There is no evidence that he is affiliated with any political or religious ideology, police and prosecutors said.

At the age of 13 and 14, he was sent three times to Prevent, the British anti-terrorist program, for violence rehabilitation, but those referrals were eventually dropped because it was decided each time that he did not meet the threshold for intervention.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in Downing Street on Tuesday that the attack was a sign that terrorism in the country was emerging, and that young people were being victimized by a “wave of violence that is freely available on the Internet.”

“We’re also seeing acts of extreme violence by lone individuals, misfits, young men in their bedrooms, accessing all sorts of things on the internet, looking to be disappointed,” said Mr. because of it.”

Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of the weapons charge of possessing a knife used in an attack, producing biological poison and “having information” which is defined as “of the kind that may be useful to a person who commits or prepares a certain act.” of terrorism” after investigators found ricin, a deadly poison, and a PDF file titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual” in his home.

The judge will not be able to sentence him to life in prison with the condition that the perpetrator never be released from prison on parole – because he was only 17 years old at the time of the murder.

In 2019, Mr. Rudakubana was expelled after bringing a knife to school and a few months later he returned to attack a student with a hockey stick. He was then enrolled in a school for children with special needs.

The local defense agency said he had struggled to integrate the new school, and when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020 and schools closed across Britain, his isolation deepened. He had been withdrawn from his family and community long before the attack, until he left home.

A week before the attack, Mr. Rudakubana tried to go to his high school, the police said, but his father ran out of the house and begged the taxi driver not to take him. Finally, the young man returned to the house.

On July 29, however, she was able to take a taxi to Hart Space, where Taylor Swift’s sold-out dance class for 6- to 11-year-olds was taking place during the school summer break.

Mr. Rudakubana entered a house full of 26 children and stabbed many of them. Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so badly injured that they died inside the building, police said, while Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside with other children but soon collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital and died the next day. Eight other children and two adults were injured in the attack.

This case has raised questions about how it is possible that the authorities lost the opportunity to stop the violence before it started. The government said it will conduct a public inquiry into the case to better understand what happened and what needs to be changed. But the case also highlighted the issue of young people primed for extreme violence accessing online images and messages that fuel that addiction.