Once an unassuming schoolboy who attended a UK drama club, teenager Axel Rudakubana retreated into his own world over the years, searching for increasingly violent images online. Rudakubana is set to be sentenced on Thursday and faces a long custodial term after pleading guilty to murdering three young girls at a dance class in Southport in northwest England, in a shock admission just before his trial had been due to open.
Official statements and media reports have portrayed him as a reclusive teenager who became obsessed with online violence, barely emerging from his bedroom or communicating with his family. Even though he and his family had frequent contact with police and social services, they ultimately failed to stop him carrying out an attack triggered a week of riots. Rudakubana was born in Cardiff in Wales to parents who came to the UK from Rwanda in the years following the genocide.
He was expelled when he was a young teenager for carrying a knife to school and later assaulting students with a hockey stick, for which he was convicted. His teachers referred him to the authorities in for viewing violent material, five years before he would commit the worst mass killing of children the UK has seen since the Dunblane massacre in Scotland. Rudakubana has confessed to killing Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, as well as the attempted murder of 10 others.
Armed with a centimetre 8-inch kitchen knife he bought on Amazon days before his 18th birthday, Rudakubana went on a rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on July 29, He had admitted carrying a knife 10 times before carrying out the July stabbings, interior minister Yvette Cooper told MPs.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has now ordered a public inquiry into why he slipped through the cracks. After leaving mainstream education in and being enrolled in specialist schools, Rudakubana became increasingly isolated and his school attendance dropped. They detailed violent upheavals from history, including the Rwandan genocide, and other images of machetes and knives were found. And they have now been moved by police to a secret location for their protection.
