Axel Rudakubana: From an unknown ‘choir boy’ who wouldn’t leave the house to an evil child killer

By Dan Haygarth | 24/01/25

Hello,

After Axel Rudakubana was yesterday sentenced to at least 52 years behind bars for committing the Southport stabbings, the ECHO’s Liam Thorp has looked at the red flags and missed chances to stop him - you can read that piece here. Following our reporting, Alder Hey Children's Hospital has for the first time revealed that Rudakubana was under the care of its mental health services.

In today’s Liverpool Daily Post, Ben Haslam, Adam Everett and Patrick Edrich look at how Rudakubana went from an unknown ‘choir boy’ who wouldn’t leave the house to an evil child killer.

The aspiring actor who was expelled from school

To many who knew Axel Rudakubana as a young boy the thought that he could go on to commit one of the most heinous crimes in recent memory would have seemed impossible. He was once a slightly built boy from a God-fearing family with a love of the performing arts. And yet he had it in him to carry out a harrowing act of violence that left three little girls dead and many more injured and traumatised.

But, for those who remained familiar with him during his teenage years, the warning signs for what happened that tragic day in Southport were undoubtedly there. He was expelled from high school for carrying a knife, there were repeated referrals to a counter terrorism agency and a dark obsession with mass genocide, murder and war.

When Rudakubana’s dad pleaded with a taxi driver not to take his son to the teenager’s former school only a week before the attack at The Hart Space, disaster and tragedy was not averted but postponed. But despite months of investigations, an exhaustive trawl of the family home on Old School Close in Banks and a thorough examination of his digital devices and online activities, detectives have still been unable to answer the question of why he did what he did.

Merseyside Police ultimately found no evidence to prove that the child killer had been indoctrinated by any particular political or religious ideology. Instead, all they have been able to conclude is that his murderous assault was premeditated and that his sole purpose was to kill. When he did so, he targeted the youngest and most vulnerable.

Today, Axel Rudakubana was handed a minimum of 52 years behind bars. As he begins his life sentence, the ECHO investigates how the choir boy who wouldn’t leave the house went on to become a savage and evil killer and whether there were missed opportunities to stop him before he was able to act out his murderous fantasies.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana was born in Cardiff on August 7 2006, his mum and dad Laetitia Muzayire and Alphonse Rudakubana having moved to the Welsh capital from Rwanda four years earlier in 2002. The teenager, along with his parents and older brother, would later make the move north to Southport, living in a home in the town centre within a stone’s throw of Southport Police Station.

As a youngster, Rudakubana developed a love of acting and once even donned a pair of spectacles and an oversized coat while playing the role of Doctor Who in a BBC Children in Need advert. This passion for the performing arts had the potential to result in a future within the industry too, having been enrolled at the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts. It is believed that the teenager was also on the books of a talent agency once upon a time, but was ultimately deemed to be lacking in the confidence required to make a career in showbiz.

Rudakubana attended St Patrick’s Primary School in Marshside, and his family are believed to have called the seaside town home for around four years before relocating to a new build estate in a small cul-de-sac within the rural West Lancashire village of Banks, a few miles north of Southport. His father would speak to the Southport Visiter in 2013 following their move, discussing his time spent training in karate in Rwanda with the local paper.

The couple’s youngest son later enrolled at Range High School in Formby. But, due to a host of behavioural issues, including being caught on camera as he was restrained by his fellow pupils in a classroom, he was permanently expelled. The ECHO can confirm that the now 18-year-old was removed from the school and sixth form after ringing Childline in October 2019 and revealing that he was carrying a knife for what he claimed was his own protection due to bullying.

In a statement issued by the NSPCC, the charity confirmed that its counselling service was contacted a "few times" by Rudakubana in 2019 with the last of these occasions being "sufficiently serious to breach a threshold which led to Childline informing the local authorities of their concerns". A spokesperson added: “Once the court case concludes, it is vital any learning review that follows looks in full detail into all the circumstances and reasons which contributed to this terrible attack in an effort to ensure that similar tragedies can be stopped from happening in the future."

Terrorism concerns emerged as Rudakubana turned on his family

Following his exclusion, Rudakubana would return to the school on December 11 2019 and subject another pupil to an attack with a hockey stick. He was found with a knife after being detained, leading to him being charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, possession of a weapon in a school and possession of another offensive weapon and handed a 10-month youth referral order.

It was after this incident that he was enrolled at The Acorns School, a special educational needs establishment in Ormskirk, before he was diagnosed with autism in February 2021. But, during his spell there, he was found to have used a school computer to look up the 2017 London Bridge terror attack, the IRA and the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine.

This ultimately resulted in a referral to Prevent, a government-led, multi-agency programme spearheaded by Counter Terrorism Policing. The ECHO can confirm that a total of three referrals were made by education providers to the scheme between December 2019 and April 2021.

In November that year, police were called to his home on two occasions. Officers were first called when Rudakubana became distressed when a stranger was at the door. The second came later in the month when Rudakubana attacked his dad at the family home and threw a plate at his car. Five months later, in March 2022, he went missing from home before being found on a bus with a knife when the driver rang police over the teen refusing to pay the fare. Police put the incident down to a bad mental health episode as a result of his autism and ADHD as per a report seen by the ECHO.

On each of these occasions separate vulnerable child referrals were made. The same month, he was transferred to Presfield School and Specialist College but was reluctant to attend. His attendance levels plummeted, and he spent large periods of time at home.

In May 2022, a 999 call was made after his father denied him access to a computer in the early hours. Rudakubana threw food, locked himself in the bathroom and overfilled the bath, resulting in the electricity cutting out. At this point, the report states, his parents were concerned about him growing older and stronger.

By February 2023, Rudakubana had stopped engaging with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This was followed by a call to Lancashire Police control room from his school due to his lack of attendance but as he had been seen by CAMHS at the beginning of the year, it was not followed up with a home visit. A year later, in February 2024, the teen had not left the house for four to five months - with a source telling the ECHO that his teachers would feel “unsafe” if required to conduct home visits alone.

During this self-imposed isolation, Rudakubana immersed himself in violence. Still only 17, he developed an obsession with genocide, mass murder and war.

Books recovered from his home following his eventual arrest made for grim reading. They covered a wide range of subject matter, from the history of Nazi Germany to violence around Buddhism in Sri Lanka, clan cleansing in Somalia to the Rwandan genocide, conflicts in Iraq and the Balkans to victims of torture and tales of beheadings to obscene cartoons.

Rudakubana, who would typically sleep on a sofa in the living room, also began scouring the internet for similarly concerning materials and amassed an alarming haul of weaponry. He kept a machete and arrows in his bedroom, as well as a number of bottles with matches stuck in them in what were seemingly crude attempts at creating Molotov cocktails.

On June 11 last year, Rudakubana placed an online order for a knife which was cancelled due to a failed payment. Just over a month later, on July 13, he ordered a similar knife from Amazon which was also unsuccessful for the same reason.

But, later the same day, he was able to order two Cerbera kitchen knives using a VPN in order to mask his identity. Axel Rudakubana had his murder weapon. Next, he would search for his target.

Attack on The Hart Space

At 12.20pm on July 22 2024, exactly one week before the attack at the Hart Space, Rudakubana booked a taxi from his home under the name “Simon”. His intended destination was the Range High School. Pupils were due to finish for the summer holidays 10 minutes later, and the area would undoubtedly have been busy with students and parents at home time.

The car arrived and Rudakubana entered. However, just as the taxi was about to depart, his dad rushed outside and pleaded with the driver not to take his son. An argument ensued, and the then 17-year-old eventually relented and went back inside.

Seven days later, footage seen by the ECHO showed Rudakubana walking down Hoole Lane, near to his address, at 11.11am before returning home five minutes later. Wearing a green hoodie, black tracksuit pants and covering his face with a surgical mask, Rudakubana then paced around his driveway before getting into a Toyota taxi.

Minutes beforehand, he had searched online for a video of the Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbing in Sydney before wiping the search history from his Lenovo tablet. He remained silent during the subsequent journey, with the 20cm Cerbera knife stashed out of sight.

Rudakubana directed the car to 34a Hart Street, the industrial estate where The Hart Space is located, and walked out without settling the fare. He was followed by the driver and was told by Colin Parry, the owner of a nearby garage who had spotted the commotion, to pay up. The teenager merely replied “what are you going to do about it?” and strolled into the community centre.

Inside, 26 happy children had spent the morning dancing to Taylor Swift songs, making masks and bracelets and posing for pictures beside a cardboard cutout of the global superstar. Within seconds, the air was punctuated with the screams of terrified children and adults as Rudakubana systematically worked his way through the room and struck out with the knife at will. In total, 11 children would be stabbed. Two of them, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe, died inside the studio due to the severity of their injuries.

As the children attempted to flee, Rudakubana gave chase and stabbed whoever he could. Jonathan Hayes, a business owner working on the estate, and dance teacher Leanne Lucas were knifed after running to the children’s aid, while another tutor running the event, Heidi Liddle, barricaded herself inside the toilets with a small girl.

One mum who was parked outside while waiting to collect her child heard the screams before seeing the children running in terror. She grabbed her daughter and locked her inside her vehicle along with three others. One of them was Alice da Silva Aguiar, who subsequently collapsed next to the car. She too would not survive the attack.

The first police on the scene arrived at the Hart Space at 11.57am. They found Rudakubana inside, still holding the knife. He dropped the weapon under their orders and was detained as passing window cleaner Joel Verite ran in and carried Bebe away in his arms.

By 1.29pm, armed officers had descended upon the Rudakubana home. It soon became apparent that what had unfolded earlier that day was not some random act of violence, but instead a premeditated plan to enact mass murder.

Searches of the address would be halted the following day after the discovery of a Tupperware box containing an unknown substance. On August 2, this was confirmed to be ricin - a highly toxic and potentially fatal substance derived from castor beans.

Enquiries later revealed that Rudakubana had ordered a total of 150 castor bean seeds online under the name “Al Rud” as long ago as January 2022. A cardboard box found underneath the floorboards of his bedroom meanwhile contained a pair of goggles, funnels and a conical flask with the remnants of a brown residue.

A pestle and mortar was also recovered with “pulp” upon it. All of these items had been purchased from Amazon during 2022.

Detectives do not believe that Rudakubana used ricin during the July 29 stabbings or at any other time, suggesting that any possible chemical element of his assault was strictly experimental. However, his interest in carrying out such an attack was obvious.

Officers also found that he had downloaded a PDF file entitled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual” back in 2021. And while this dossier would result in a criminal charge under the Terrorism Act 2000, police have not deemed the attack on the Hart Space as a terrorist incident due to detectives being unable to ascertain a clear motive.

At Copy Lane Police Station following his arrest, Rudakubana remained silent under interview. He was not silent throughout his time in custody however, outrageously gloating to officers at one stage: “It’s a good thing those children are dead… I’m so glad… so happy”.

In the days and weeks afterwards, the community struggled to put into words its shock, disbelief and grief. Neighbours detailed how the Rudakubanas were heavily involved with a church in the area and described the killer as a “quiet choir boy” whose singing they would often hear ringing out above their suburban homes, although church leaders have recently said he did not take part in church life.

Others described the family as “unknown” and said they had never spoken to them “more than to say hello” over the best part of a decade. They appeared to be two parents and two sons who, for the most part, kept themselves to themselves.

But one neighbour, Caroline, vividly recalls one detail which still stands out from her time living next door to the Rudakubana family, telling the ECHO: “He used to stare at me, like he was staring right through me. I just thought he was a normal, moody teenager.”

Now that the youngest member of the Rudakubana clan has been sentenced to a minimum 52 year sentence for the most dreadful of crimes, questions will be asked as to why he wasn’t stopped before it was too late. How did the police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and various mental health teams fail to identify the terrible risk and danger he posed to others? Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this week announced a public inquiry which will explore just how it was that Rudakubana was allowed to achieve his despicable goals.

And while the fallout will continue for a long time to come, there is a temptation to think that Bebe, Elsie, Alice and the eight other children who were stabbed that day were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time on July 29 2024. But the very opposite is true.

They were in exactly the right place at the right time - innocently enjoying their summer holidays with their friends, brothers and sisters, dreaming of one day emulating the fame and success of their favourite singer. For three little girls, that dream will never come true. Because Axel Rudakubana was the one in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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