There’s been a lot of speculation (and devastation) following the mass stabbing in Southport earlier this week, which claimed the lives of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Hart Street in the Merseyside town on Monday.
A rumour was doing the rounds online that claimed the attacker was a Muslim migrant who had just arrived in the UK by boat, which was unfortunate because it prompted a bunch of people to start burning cars and attacking mosques in Southport.
It now turns out the attacker was actually a 17-year-old boy named Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Wales and had moved to Southport with his Rwandan parents when he was 6.
It comes after the Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Andrew Menary KC, took the ‘exceptional’ step of lifting reporting restrictions which previously banned the boy from being identified due to his age. Rudakubana is due to turn 18 next week, on August 7, so I guess there’s no harm done in naming him early, especially as it helps squash all the fake news being bandied about.
Rudakubana is charged with murdering Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven. Eight other children suffered knife wounds – with five of them in a critical condition – while two adults were also seriously hurt while trying to protect the children.
The only other information we have on Axel Rudakubana is that he’s an ‘introvert’ with a background in musical theatre, and also took karate classes. He had been living in the village of Banks, just outside Southport, at the time of the attack. A former neighbour told the BBC he was ‘clingy’ to his mother as a child, and that his parents were a ‘lovely young couple’.
Who knows what happened in this kid’s life that led him to make this decision; attacking a group of innocent, defenceless young girls at a dance class? This is the crucial information that’s currently missing. The only theories I’ve seen online centre around the words “incel”, “terrorist” and “immigrant”, but I suppose only Axel Rudakubana can tell us his motivation for sure.
What we can definitely say is that this tragic event didn’t happen for no reason, and that there were points of failure in this kid’s life that the rest of us can learn about and use to stop this sort of thing from happening again.
Thoughts with the victims and their friends and families at this time.
For Taylor Swift’s reaction to the tragic event, click HERE.
