Southport killer admits carrying knife 10 times

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana admitted possessing a knife on 10 separate occasions, but was still able to buy a blade on Amazon, the Home Secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper said that many agencies failed to recognize the threat posed by the teen because he had developed a passion for extreme violence in the years before the attack.

On Monday, Rudacubana pleaded guilty to the murders of six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancomb and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguirre last July. He will be sentenced on Thursday.

Earlier the Prime Minister had warned “New and dangerous threat” This was followed by the announcement of a public inquiry into violence-prone individuals who had missed opportunities to stop Rudakubana.

Cooper told the Commons it was “completely outrageous” that he was “able to easily order a knife on Amazon” at the age of 17, despite having a prior conviction for a violent offense against another child at school.

It also emerged that Rudakubana was referred to the anti-extremism program Prevent on three separate occasions between 2019 and 2021.

A review of the program over the summer found that Prevent had failed to characterize Rudakubana as a serious threat because he did not demonstrate a commitment to a single radical ideology, Cooper told the Commons.

In light of Rudakubana’s interest in extreme violence, he said, “There was too much emphasis on the absence of ideology.”

Cooper said that it was “intolerable to think that something more could and should have been done to stop him”, and that “the action taken against him was very weak”.

The Home Secretary said the public inquiry would be given all the powers necessary to assess whether red flags were missed. Areas of interest are likely to include:

• Officers from Lancashire Constabulary responded to calls from Rudakubana’s home address on five occasions relating to concerns about his behavior between October 2019 and May 2022.
• Frequent referrals to protective services, children’s social care and adolescent mental health services
• A referral to the youth offensive team after Rudakubana was convicted of a violent crime.
• Concerns were reported to local authorities by Childline after calls made by Rudakubana as a teenager, including one call in which he revealed he planned to take a knife to school due to racial bullying.

Speaking in Downing Street earlier on Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer said the failures of public bodies in the lead-up to the Southport murders had “fell off the page” and it was “clearly wrong” to find Rudakubana not meeting the threshold for intervention. Was understood for. Prevention program.

The circumstances surrounding Rudakubana’s offending have drawn widespread investigation into what the government has described as a growing threat from youth interested in extreme violence.

Cooper told the Commons that 162 people were referred to Prevent last year over concerns related to school massacres, which he described as “the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”.

He said the number of children investigated for involvement in terrorism has increased three times in three years.

The government said tech companies must remove the type of extreme content that Rudakubana had accessed online.

Cooper said they “should not be profiting” from hosting content that “puts children’s lives at risk”.