U.K. Teenager Who Killed 3 Girls in Southport Sentenced to Life in Prison

The teenager who killed three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack on a children’s dance class in Southport, England, last summer was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison, with a minimum term of 52 years.

The attacker, Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty to his crimes earlier this week. He refused to attend the sentencing after a number of outbursts earlier in the day prompted the judge to order him removed from court.

“The harm that Rudakubana has caused to each family, to each child, to the community has been profound and permanent,” said Judge Julian Goose, who presided over the case. “It was such extreme violence of the utmost and exceptionally high seriousness that it is difficult to comprehend why it was done.”

The judge was not able to sentence him to a whole life order — a life sentence with the stipulation that the perpetrator should never be released from prison on parole — because he was just 17 at the time of the deadly attack. But Mr. Rudakubana must serve a minimum term of 52 years, according to the sentence, before he could possibly be paroled, with the judge adding that it is unlikely that he will ever be released.

Judge Goose noted that Mr. Rudakubana had been “determined to disrupt the hearing” so that he would not have to face his victims’ families.

Mr. Rudakubana had appeared in Liverpool Crown Court wearing a gray sweatsuit on Thursday morning, with a blue medical mask covering his mouth and nose. As prosecutors began reading out the details of the case, Mr. Rudakubana screamed, “I need to speak to a paramedic because I feel ill.”

The judge noted that medical specialists had examined Mr. Rudakubana that morning and determined him fit to attend the hearing. He continued to yell for several minutes.

Judge Goose said: “These proceedings are being conducted under my control, not yours, Mr. Rudakubana. Do you understand?” He then ordered Mr. Rudakubana removed from the court, saying, “I won’t have him disrupting.”

Prosecutors proceeded to read out the details of their case against him, revealing the harrowing nature of the attack on July 29. Deanna Heer, a lawyer for the prosecution, said he “targeted the youngest, most vulnerable in order to spread the greatest level of fear and outrage, which he succeeded in doing.”

She told the courtroom that while Mr. Rudakubana was under arrest at the police station after the attack, he was heard to say, “It’s a good thing those children are dead” and “I’m so glad.”

Ms. Heer recounted how he had traveled by taxi to Hart Space, where a sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children ages 6 to 11 was underway during the summer break from school.

Visual evidence shown in court, taken from CCTV footage and police-worn body cameras, showed Mr. Rudakubana arriving outside the dance studio that was crowded with 26 children.

He entered the building and rampaged through the room, stabbing several children as well as Leanne Lucas, who had organized the class. Moments later, screams could be heard on outdoor CCTV footage, before children began running from the building.

Some were covered in blood and collapsed before bystanders helped them.

Several people wept in the courtroom as the footage was shown, and some chose to leave, overcome by emotion.

The injuries suffered by Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so severe that they died inside the building, the police said. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside with the other children but soon collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and died the next day. Eight other children and two adults were wounded in the attack.

But amid the horror, there was also heroism. The court heard how after Ms. Lucas was stabbed in the back, she still managed to usher the children out the door and urge them to run for safety, even as she bled from a severe wound.

Another teacher in the dance studio at the time of the attack, Heidi Liddle, also encouraged children to flee, before one girl ran toward the bathroom. Ms. Liddle followed her inside, locked the door and braced her foot against it to protect them. She told the girl not to make a sound. The police later rescued them.

Two window cleaners working nearby, Marcin Tyjon and Joel Verite, heard the commotion and rushed to the scene. Mr. Verite followed the police into the building, picked up Bebe and carried her out of the building, screaming as he did so because of the severity of her injuries. Mr. Tyjon gave CPR to Alice in a parking lot outside.

Ms. Lucas, in a statement read out in court, said that her injuries had affected her physically and mentally.

“I, as do the girls, have scars we cannot unsee, scars we cannot move on from,” she said, adding, “To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible. For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”

Since Mr. Rudakubana pleaded guilty, a portrait of a deeply troubled young man obsessed with violence has emerged, as has the fact that he was on the radar of the local authorities for years before the attack in Southport, a town north of Liverpool.

After the attack, a series of anti-immigrant riots broke out in Britain after disinformation about the perpetrator’s identity swirled on social media and messaging apps. False claims that he was an undocumented immigrant or newly arrived asylum seeker were amplified by far-right agitators. Mr. Rudakubana is a British citizen who was born in Wales to parents originally from Rwanda.

At age 13 and 14, he was referred three times to Prevent, a British counterterrorism program. The first time was for researching school shootings during class, in 2019. In 2021, he was referred for uploading images of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, to his Instagram account, and for researching the London Bridge terror attack. But those referrals were ultimately dropped because it was determined each time that he did not meet the threshold for intervention.

There was no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology, the police and prosecutors said. Content found on Mr. Rudakubana’s computer and tablets showed a longstanding fascination with violence, killing and genocide.

The material included a history of Nazi Germany, reports on violence in modern Sri Lanka, documents about war in Chechnya, a book on clan cleansing in Somalia, academic reports on the Rwandan genocide, and a paper on punishments used on enslaved people on 18th-century British plantations.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that the attack was a sign that terrorism in the country was evolving, and that young people were being radicalized by “a tidal wave of violence freely available online.”

Speaking during the sentencing hearing, Stan Reiz, the defense lawyer for Mr. Rudakubana, said that his client showed a “lack of maturity and total lack of empathy” but did not put any medical evidence before the court relating to a diagnosis of mental illness.

Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of producing a biological toxin, after investigators found ricin, a lethal chemical, under his bed, and of “possessing information” described as “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism,” because he had downloaded a PDF file titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual.”

The judge will not be able to sentence him to prison for life without parole, because he was 17 at the time of the attack.

The case has raised questions about how the authorities missed opportunities to stop the violence before it began. The government has said it will conduct a public inquiry into the case to better understand what happened and what needs to change. But the case has also highlighted the issue of young people fixated on extreme violence who gain access to online images and messages that drive that obsession. Still, at the end of the day, the authorities said that on the day of the sentencing, the focus should remain on the victims.

“Today is about the families,” Serena Kennedy, the chief constable of Merseyside Police, said of the sentencing in a statement. “It’s about the three gorgeous little girls, Elsie, Bebe and Alice, and all those victims who were injured on the day, but also traumatized, and just remembering the impact that this has had on them and will continue to have on them for the rest of their lives.”