THE NEW YORK TIMES: Southport dance class killer’s parents could have prevented fatal knife rampage

A deadly knife attack on a dance class in Southport, England in 2024 could have been prevented by the killer’s parents, according to an official inquiry that also criticised several state agencies.

Axel Rudakubana was 17 when he murdered three children and tried to kill 10 others on July 29, 2024.

The inquiry’s damning report, published Monday, concluded that he would not have been able to conduct the attack if his parents had reported him to the authorities earlier that month when knives were delivered to their home and when he tried to travel to a nearby school after making threats of violence.

Rudakubana rampaged through a packed Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance class in Southport, a seaside town near Liverpool, killing Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7; Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9; and Bebe King, 6; and injuring 10 others.

Justice Adrian Fulford, who oversaw the inquiry, said Monday that some form of “grave violence” by Rudakubana had been “clearly, repeatedly and unambiguously signposted over many years.”

“One of the most striking conclusions from this inquiry’s extensive investigation is the sheer number of the missed opportunities over many years to intervene meaningfully,” he said, “which directly contributed to the failure to avert this disaster.”

Fulford said that if the relevant government agencies had properly managed and responded to the known risks about Rudakubana from late 2019 onward, it was “highly likely” the attack would never have happened.

“History simply would have taken a different course,” he said.

In the weeks after the attack, it emerged that Rudakubana had exhibited signs of violent behaviour for years.

Fulford’s report detailed five fundamental problems. It found that none of the numerous agencies that had interacted with Rudakubana before the attack had “accepted responsibility for assessing and managing the grave risk” that he posed.

There were also critical failures to share information about Rudakubana, a misunderstanding of his autism spectrum diagnosis, a lack of oversight of his activity online and serious shortcomings by his parents.

The inquiry found that Rudakubana’s parents had borne “considerable blame” for what happened by creating “significant obstructions to constructive engagement” with the agencies involved.

The couple was “too ready to excuse and defend his actions,” failed to stand up to his behaviour and set boundaries, and failed to report a clear escalation in risk in the days leading up to the attack, the report said.

Fulford acknowledged that it was “unrealistic” to expect that all violent individuals could be prevented from carrying out attacks on others.

“But when a truly grave risk has been clearly identified, our society is entitled to expect, at the very least, that meaningful and substantive steps will be taken to avert the impending disaster,” he said. “That conspicuously did not happen in this case.”

The brutality of the Southport attack rocked Britain in 2024. It was followed by nationwide riots after disinformation claiming the attacker was an illegal Muslim immigrant spread rapidly online. Rudakubana was actually born in Cardiff, Wales, to Christian parents originally from Rwanda.

In 2025, he pleaded guilty to all charges against him and was sentenced to life in prison.

Rudakubana had previously brought a knife to school and was expelled when the school found out. His behaviour had been flagged repeatedly by school officials.

He later brought a hockey stick to school and attacked another pupil, and brought a knife into a public bus. He had been referred to an official counter-terrorism program, Prevent, at least three times before the attack because of his obsession with violence.

The inquiry concluded that the “degrading, violent and misogynistic material” that he had viewed online “contributed to — and ‘fed’ — his already unhealthy fascination with violence” and allowed him to “build an arsenal of weapons, and to prepare a chemical and biological weapon in ricin, through online purchases.”

The public inquiry was created to investigate how there had been so little intervention to address the risk posed by a teenager who had purchased knives, made multiple threats to kill others and had repeated contact with the police, the courts, social services and mental health services.

The report is the first of two phases of the inquiry. The second part will focus on the “adequacy of arrangements for identifying and managing the risk posed by individuals who are fixated with extreme violence,” Britain’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said Monday. The second report is expected to be released in early 2027.