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The parents of a seven-year-old girl who was stabbed 33 times in the Southport atrocity have described how their daughter “fought like hell” to escape after shielding other children from the attacker.
The girl suffered “catastrophic” injuries when she was set upon by Axel Rudakubana as she tried to protect another child at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year.
She managed to escape but was dragged back into the building by the 18-year-old who stabbed her another 20-plus times in 11 seconds, before she managed to flee again.
The little girl, whose parents said she had once been “completely carefree” and loved adventure, lost her body’s entire blood volume but survived thanks to two life-saving operations at Alder Hey hospital.
They were one of four sets of parents who described their “living nightmare” on the first day of evidence in the Southport inquiry on Wednesday. The mother and father said the victims of the attack deserved an apology and that they wanted to see “meaningful, substantial change to ensure no child will ever share our daughter’s experience again”.
The inquiry is examining the missed opportunities to prevent the killing of Bebe King, six; Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven; and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; and the attempted murder of 10 others on 29 July last year.
Sir Adrian Fulford, the chair, said on Tuesday the inquiry would examine the “wholesale failure” of multiple institutions to prevent “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”. Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January.
Giving evidence at Liverpool town hall, the seven-year-old girl’s mother said she wanted to highlight the courage shown by her daughter and the other children on that “horrific” day.
The youngster, who can be identified only as C1, shielded other girls from the attacker as he rained down blows with a 17cm kitchen knife.
Occasionally breaking to stop her tears, her mother said: “She tells me with such clarity that a moment came where one of the girls was able to get up, she put the girl’s hand on the handrail and told her to go – to get down the stairs – and she did.”
The girl told her mother how she “crouched over the top of her. I told her it would be OK”, adding: “It happened so fast, but I helped them, I’m glad I could help them, Mum.”
Her mother told the inquiry: “She recalls this with such purpose and determination, like it was her responsibility.”
She said her daughter’s courage had left her “crushed and in complete awe”, and that it was an “uncomfortable and often unspoken truth” that the adults had initially left to call police.
She said: “When the adults left in those first moments, our daughter had to save herself. It is these untold stories of remarkable strength and bravery that are missing when we have heard other accounts of this day.”
Comforting her daughter through the trauma, she said, was like “sucking out poison”.
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The inquiry is expected to receive evidence from Rudakubana’s brother, Dion, who has never spoken publicly; the chief constable of Merseyside police, Serena Kennedy; the home secretary, Yvette Cooper; and bosses at Amazon, which the killer used to buy knives despite being underage.
The father of a nine-year-old girl who was stabbed three times in the back described how his daughter suffered from flashbacks, had difficulty going to sleep, looked over her shoulder “scanning for potential danger, and had to turn off particular songs when they played on the radio”.
He said she had a fear of loud noises and felt uncomfortable being on a different floor to her parents at home. “She has not fully recovered. She bears the scars, both physically and emotionally, of that terrible day,” he said.
The mother of another girl, who escaped the attacker, said her “strong, brave and beautiful” daughter now struggled to sleep at night, was afraid of open doors and sometimes could not go to school because of anxiety, instead hiding under the dining table. “She asks: ‘How will I ever be normal again?’”
Another seven-year-old girl, known as C8, could not be left alone and only felt safe with immediate family or close friends, her mother said. The sight of older boys in school uniform had become a “major trigger”, she added, since they unintentionally saw a picture of Rudakubana wearing his school uniform on the front page of a national newspaper.
The mother said: “My daughter and all the people there that day have witnessed horrors that no one should ever see and I don’t think I will understand the impact on her until she is grown up.
“I am grateful beyond words that she survived. But what she went through, what she saw, and what she continues to carry has changed everything.”
