‘Not guilty’ plea entered for suspect in Southport, UK murders news
When 18-year-old Axel Rudacubana was asked at Liverpool Crown Court whether he was guilty of the murders of 9-year-old Alice DaSilva Aguiar, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 6-year-old Babe King, he said nothing.
A British teenager accused of murdering three young girls in a knife attack in northern England in July has pleaded “not guilty” on his own behalf, a crime that horrified the nation and followed it for days There were nationwide riots.
Axel Rudacubana, 18, said nothing at Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday when asked whether he was guilty of murdering 9-year-old Alice DeSilva Aguiar, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 6-year-old Babe King, who Taylor Swift was in. Themed dance event in Southport.
Pleas of “not guilty” were also entered on charges of 10 attempted murders, production of the deadly poison ricin and possession of al-Qaeda training manuals. The defendant is scheduled to stand trial in January.
British-born Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, was arrested soon after the attack in the seaside town north of Liverpool. Police have said the incident is not being treated as terrorist related.
Major unrest broke out in the city after a false report spread on social media that the suspected killer was a Muslim immigrant.
The unrest spread across Britain, including attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer blaming far-right hooliganism for the riots.
The disorder soon escalated into large-scale anti-immigration riots, England’s worst unrest in more than a decade.
Police ‘failed’ to respond to the chaos
A watchdog report said on Wednesday that UK police underestimated the “rising wave of violence” that culminated in the riots and failed to reduce the online misinformation that helped instigate them.
The emergency services watchdog’s report into the police response found intelligence “gaps” and failures to understand and stop misinformation spreading on social media, as well as operational errors.
Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cook told the BBC, “Social media played a big role and unfortunately, the intelligence processes that were in place before this did not adequately pick up some of the warning signals that happened over the last 24 months.” radio.
The head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said in the assessment, “Nobody understood or could counter the emerging cause and effect of that misinformation and disinformation.”
“The police therefore failed to adequately condemn or take action in real time to prevent or reduce the disorder.”
The HMICFRS report also found that police intelligence assessments failed to detect that various violent incidents in 2023 and the first half of this year were indicators of potential future disorder.
“Our assessment of these incidents suggests that the risks of disorder were greater than police anticipated,” the report said.
“They involved extreme nationalistic sentiment, extreme activism or serious disorder.”
Meanwhile, after days of chaos, police leaders took the decision “too late” to coordinate and organize specialist public order officers, according to the report.
Cook called for a national co-ordinator to instruct the various police forces in England to provide mutual aid in such circumstances.
