Teachers of Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana were concerned about his violence which saw the young killer expelled after an incident with a hockey stick.
The teenager went on to kill innocent schoolgirls Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, who had all been taking part in a summer holiday Taylor Swift-themed dance class. Today, he pleaded guilty to their three murders and the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults. He will be sentenced on Thursday.
Now it has come to light that Rudakubana, who is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, is believed to have left Range High School in Formby in 2019, before moving to a specialist school. Teachers at the specialist school, which was within the borough of Sefton, were concerned about Rudakubana’s behaviour and his violence towards others.
Aged 11, Rudakubana appeared dressed as Doctor Who in a television advert for BBC Children In Need, after being recruited through a casting agency. The now-deleted clip shows him leaving the Tardis wearing a trench coat and tie to look like the show’s former star David Tennant and offering advice on how best to raise money.
At his first appearance at Liverpool Crown Court, Deanna Heer KC, prosecuting, said it was understood Rudakubana had been unwilling to leave the house and communicate with his family for a period of time. She said: “He was seen by the psychiatrists at the police station but refused to engage with them.” The court was told he had no obvious evidence of mental health disorder which required diversion to hospital.
His mother, father and older brother were co-operating with police and had provided witness statements. At all of his court appearances, Rudakubana held his sweatshirt over his face and refused to speak. When he first entered Liverpool Magistrates’ Court, he was seen to smile towards members of the press before covering his face.
A profile of his father, Alphonse Rudakubana, printed in local newspaper, the Southport Visiter, in 2015 said he was originally from Rwanda, a country that suffered a deadly genocide in the early 1990s, and moved to the UK in 2002. Rudakubana, the youngest son of the family, was born in Cardiff, where neighbours of the family described a “lovely couple” with a hardworking father and stay-at-home mother to “two boisterous boys”.
In 2013 they moved to Banks, just a few miles outside of Southport, where Rudakubana’s father trained with local martial arts clubs.
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