On July 29, 2024, a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, became the site of a devastating tragedy when 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana killed three young girls—Elsie Dot Stancombe, age seven; Bebe King, age six; and Alice da Silva Aguiar, age nine—and attempted to murder ten more children. The horror of that day has since echoed through the community, culminating in a public inquiry that has laid bare the failures and regrets of those closest to the attacker, as well as the grief and anger of the victims’ families.
The first phase of the Southport Inquiry concluded on November 6, 2025, with emotional testimony from Axel’s parents, Alphonse Rudakubana and Laetitia Muzayire. Appearing via videolink, their voices—though not their faces—were heard by the public and press as they tried to explain their actions, or lack thereof, in the months and years leading up to the attack. Both parents expressed profound sorrow and regret, but their words did little to soothe the anguish of the bereaved families, who have called for them to be held to account for what they describe as a catastrophic failure of parental responsibility.
“There are many things that Alphonse and I wish we had done differently, anything that might have prevented the horrific event of July 29, 2024,” Ms. Muzayire said in a prepared statement, her voice trembling with emotion. “For our failure, we are profoundly sorry. We pray every day for the children and their families, and for God’s comfort to surround them.” According to Sky News, both parents broke down in tears as they faced questions about why they never reported their son’s increasingly violent behavior to authorities.
The evidence presented at the inquiry painted a disturbing picture of missed warnings and mounting danger. Axel Rudakubana had been expelled from school in 2019 for carrying knives, and his father admitted he knew his son kept a “small arsenal” of weapons, including a bow and arrow, a sledgehammer, and even a sealed box later revealed to contain the ingredients for the deadly poison ricin. Just a week before the attack, Axel burst into his father’s bedroom carrying a knife, threatening “next time, if you stop me, there will be consequences.” Alphonse stopped his son from taking a taxi to his former school, Range High School in Formby, fearing he might attempt an arson attack there. Despite this, he did not alert the police.
“I’m so ashamed I lost the courage to save the little angels and I’m so, so sorry,” Mr. Rudakubana told the inquiry, his words quoted by BBC News. He admitted that he knew about his son’s weapons and violent outbursts, but believed Axel only posed a risk to himself. “The only hope I was hanging on to was that he didn’t take anything, he didn’t take a bag and I didn’t imagine that he would carry a knife somewhere else. I was just clinging on to the hope that he is going for a walk, if he was carrying a bag I would have ran out.” Upon learning of the attack through a message from his church group, he immediately feared his son was involved.
Ms. Muzayire, for her part, told the inquiry she had never seen weapons under Axel’s bed, as his room was “off limits.” She described her son as having “become another person” after his expulsion. “There’s no way I’d have ever thought that he was going to do any dreadful thing like this,” she said, apologizing for “being naive.” She recounted praying for Axel’s safe return after he left the house that morning, unaware of the horror that would soon unfold.
For the families of the victims, these apologies and explanations rang hollow. In statements released after the parents’ testimony, the parents of Elsie Dot Stancombe, Jenni and David Stancombe, declared, “Parents should be culpable when they knowingly allow such evil to exist unchecked under their own roof, when they know what their child is capable of and choose to do nothing.” They added, “We knew early on that their lack of parenting played a part in all of this, but these statements reveal a failure of parenting on a whole new level.”
Lauren and Ben King, parents of Bebe King, described the actions of Axel’s parents as “deeply disturbing and shameful.” They said: “Where was that responsibility from his parents? They were absent. They turned away from their duties. And that was not a one-off mistake, it was a pattern, repeated over days, weeks, months, and years. Time after time, they had opportunities to intervene, to stop this, to protect others. If they had acted with any real sense of duty, Bebe, Elsie and Alice would still be here. It is that simple.”
Alex and Sergio Aguiar, parents of Alice da Silva Aguiar, were equally forthright, stating, “You, as parents, had a duty—a fundamental and moral duty—to guide your child, to correct harmful behaviour and to ensure that no harm would come to others because of it. That duty was not upheld. Your failure to take responsibility, to act and to intervene when there were clear signs of danger, directly contributed to the devastating loss of our daughter’s life.”
The inquiry also revealed that Axel Rudakubana had not left the house alone since March 2022, except for the one week before the murders. The last time he had been out alone, he was caught with a knife on a bus and told police he wanted to stab someone. Despite this alarming incident, no further intervention was taken. According to BBC News, Mr. Rudakubana admitted that had he reported the delivery of a machete to the police in June 2023, “the Southport attack a year later would not have happened.”
Throughout the proceedings, the inquiry chairman, Sir Adrian Fulford, maintained a careful balance, at one point stopping a lawyer representing the bereaved families from making personal attacks on the parents and reminding all present of the inquiry’s purpose. Reporting restrictions were in place to protect the identities of Axel’s parents, who could only be seen by lawyers and the chairman at Liverpool Town Hall.
As the community awaits Sir Adrian’s report—expected by spring 2026—the debate continues about the responsibilities of parents, the effectiveness of social and legal interventions, and the warning signs that were missed. The families of the victims remain steadfast in their belief that the tragedy was not inevitable, but the result of neglect by both the parents and a system that “repeatedly ignored warning signs.”
While nothing can undo the horror of that July day, the hope is that the painful lessons of Southport will lead to meaningful change—so that, in the words of one grieving parent, “no other family has to endure what we have suffered.”
