How was the Southport murderer allowed to escape?

Axel Rudakubana did not appear suddenly.

until he carried out the brutal murder of three young girlsThe teenager was well known among the police, counter-extremism officials and several other public agencies.

But despite repeated concerns about Rudakubana’s penchant for violence, only limited intervention occurred.

The government now says it missed several opportunities to prevent his dark obsession from turning into reality. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the state had failed.

This is what we know about his journey to becoming a killer – and whether it could have been prevented.

Rudakubana’s first serious signs of being capable of causing harm came when he was in year nine at Range High School in Formby, Merseyside.

At the age of 11, he appeared in a BBC Children in Need campaign video, for which he was put forward by an acting casting agency.

But in adolescence, Rudakubana began to display anger problems and a tendency towards violence. Fellow students remember him being obsessed with figures such as Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan.

His time at Range High School ended in October 2019 after he took a knife to school. It later emerged that she told the Childline call center that she did so because she had experienced racist bullying.

Rudakubana did not use a knife on that occasion but the incident was so serious that he was permanently expelled from school.

He returned to school about two months later with a hockey stick and attacked another child with it. The staff had to stop him.

At the point he was kicked out of Range High School, Rudakubana largely dropped out of the formal education system.

Local health workers determined that he had autism spectrum disorder and he was subsequently enrolled in two other schools for children with special needs: The Acorn School and Presfield High School and Specialist College.

He subsequently attended the Sixth Form for only a few days and was largely dealt with by home visits. The school sometimes requested police to accompany teachers when they visited his home, over concerns about his violent behavior.

Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership said Rudakubana had failed to “re-integrate” into education after being expelled from Range High School, a situation made “further exacerbated by the pandemic”. His attendance was “limited”, he said.

Around the same time it was observed that Rudakubana “experienced anxiety that prevented him from leaving his home”.

Several local agencies had contact at various levels with Rudakubana during the years he stopped attending school.

After an incident of carrying a knife to school he was convicted of assault and referred to the Youth Justice Service. He carried out rehabilitation activities for young offenders who have pleaded guilty to a first offence.

However, Lancashire Constabulary had “numerous” conversations with the teenager between October 2019 and May 2022 – including four calls from his home address relating to concerns about his behaviour.

On each occasion, officers contacted MASH – a local group of agencies tasked with monitoring vulnerable people in the area.

Children’s Social Care conducted an initial assessment in Rudakubana, which found that social work support was not needed. It recommended “early assistance”, which involves less intensive forms of intervention.

Rudakubana and his family were contacted and offered guidance on their “emotional well-being and behaviour”.

He had involvement with local mental health services but stopped attending in February 2023.

A spokesperson representing local agencies said that despite efforts by professionals to engage with them, their “participation and engagement remained a challenge” during this period.

An independent review is underway into whether more could have been done to intervene.

Rudakubana’s interest in violence began to emerge before and after the attack in Southport on 29 July 2024.

He came to the attention of the government’s counter-extremism program as he expressed interest in school shootings, the London Bridge attacks, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East.

He was referred to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021 over concerns about his interest in violence.

The full scale of his obsession became clear when his home and digital devices were searched after the attack.

Police found that his devices included photographs of conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Korea, as well as abundant educational materials related to the war and genocide.

His research history revealed an interest in ethnic violence and slavery in Nazi Germany, Somalia and Rwanda.

Spies also found a US academic study of an al-Qaeda training document that had been downloaded at least twice since 2021.

These distorted interests provide the background to the horrors that unfolded on July 29.

On July 7, an ad was posted on Instagram advertising a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop for young children. It sold out within 11 days.

Classes got underway at 10:00 BST and photographs taken at the scene and reviewed by police show 26 children laughing and playing at the start of the school holidays.

Rudakubana left his house at 11:10. His face was covered with a hood and surgical mask.

He was carrying a 20 cm long kitchen knife purchased from Amazon on July 13. Police say that when he purchased encryption software, he used it to hide his identity.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called it “outrageous” that a teenager with a history of violence was able to easily obtain a blade. Amazon says it has launched an immediate investigation.

Shortly before leaving home, Rudakubana deleted his IP address from his tablet, one of several pieces of evidence uncovered by police that showed he had made efforts to conceal his online activities. They also discovered material related to the stabbing death of a bishop in Sydney in April 2024.

At 11:30 a taxi picked him up and he remained silent throughout the journey.

He left the car without paying and walked towards a garage. When the driver chased him, a collision occurred.

When the garage owner asked him to pay for his ride, Rudakubana replied: “What are you going to do about it?”

Fifteen minutes later, he was inside the dance studio and began stabbing at will.

It appears that their targets – society’s most vulnerable people, young children – were chosen to instill maximum fear and hatred.

Rudacubana killed six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguirre. While running away, he tried to kill other people by stabbing them in the back.

By 11:59 he had been arrested but did not say anything when formally questioned by the police.

In the days and weeks following the Southport attack, it became clear to investigators that Rudakubana was bent on causing carnage and death, driven by his pervasive obsession with human suffering.

When police searched his home, they found a cache of weapons, including a machete, a set of arrows, and a sealed box containing an unknown substance. Tests at the government’s biological warfare laboratory, Porton Down, confirmed that the substance was ricin, a poison for which there is no cure. There is no evidence that he ever deployed it.

It also emerged that a week before the murders, Rudakubana tried to return to Range High School, where he had been expelled five years earlier.

He was wearing the same hooded sweatshirt and surgical mask he wore during the attack the following week, but was prevented from traveling when his father pleaded with a taxi driver not to take him.

It is not known whether Rudakubana intended to attack people that day, but his actions are very similar to the events of the following week. On that second occasion, he made sure to book a taxi after leaving home.

The amount of information known before the murders about Rudakubana’s violent obsessions has raised serious questions about whether more could have been done to stop him – in particular, whether Prevent could have taken action.

Despite three referrals on Rudakubana, it has been established that concerns about him were never escalated further up the chain, meaning he was not placed under increased surveillance.

An urgent prevention review carried out in the summer found that this was because there was evidence that he had a passion for violence, but that he did not appear to fit the mold of a potential extremist.

There was no indication of allegiance to any one cause – which is why, despite pleading guilty to downloading a terror manual, his case was never treated as a terror investigation.

His case has raised concerns over whether Prevent is able to identify dangerous people who fall outside traditional views of what constitutes radicalisation.

The immediate review found that, given Rudakubana’s age and complex needs, his case should have been taken forward. This led to the conclusion that Prevent placed too much emphasis on its apparent lack of adherence to a single fundamentalist ideology.

The Home Secretary said the “cumulative significance” of Rudakubana’s three repeated referrals was “not appropriately considered” by Prevent, while Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it was “blatantly wrong”, calling on him to intervene. Was not deemed to meet program limits.

A comprehensive review of the prevention program is underway.

Rudakubana will be sentenced for his crimes on Thursday – but the questions raised by his descent into violence will haunt him for years to come.