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The trial of the teenager who killed three girls and injured 10 others last summer in a knife attack at a dance class in Southport, England, began on Thursday.
Judge Julian Goose, who presided over the case, told the attacker, 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana, that a life sentence was inevitable when he pleaded guilty on Monday.
Mr Rudakubana appeared at Liverpool Crown Court wearing gray sweats and a blue medical mask over his mouth and nose. When the judge asked him to confirm his name, he refused to speak and quietly put his head in his lap.
But shortly after the sentencing hearing began, as the prosecutor read out the details of the case, Mr. Rudakubana began shouting from the defendant’s station at the back of the room, “I need to talk to I am a doctor but I am sick.”
The judge noted that a medical specialist had examined Mr. Rudakubana that morning and determined that he was fit to stand trial. His lawyer told the judge that the accused had not eaten for several days, and Mr Rudakubana continued to scream for several minutes.
Judge Goose said: “These matters are under my jurisdiction, not yours, Mr. Rudakubana.” Do you understand?” He then ordered Mr. Rudakubana out of court, saying, “I don’t want to disturb him.”
Before Mr. Rudakubana was sentenced on Thursday, prosecutors read out the details of the charges against him, detailing the severity of the July 29 attack that Deanna Heer, the prosecuting attorney, said , but “targeted the youngest, who are most vulnerable to persecution. spread the greatest fear and anger, which was successful in his work. “
He told the courtroom that while Mr. Rudakubana was being held at the police station after the attack, he was heard saying, “It’s a good thing those children are dead” and “I’m so happy.”
Ms Heer recounted how she took a taxi to Hart Space, where Taylor Swift-themed dance classes for 6- to 11-year-olds started, during the summer break from school. .
Visual evidence presented in court, taken from CCTV footage and police cameras at the scene, showed Mr Rudakubana arriving outside the nightclub which was full of 26 children.
He entered the building and rampaged across the room, stabbing several children as well as Leanne Lucas, who organized the class. Moments later, screams can be heard on CCTV footage outside the house, before children start running from the house.
Some were bleeding and fell down before the local people came to help them. On one occasion, a dance teacher who was protecting one of the girls in the bathroom was seen by the police from the room.
Several people cried in the courtroom when the photos were shown, and many chose to leave, overcome with emotion.
In this attack, 6-year-old Bebe King and 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe were seriously injured and died inside the house, police said. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9 years old, ran out with the other children but soon collapsed. He was taken to hospital where he died the next day. Eight other children and two adults were injured in the attack.
Since Mr. Rudakubana pleaded guilty on Monday, a picture has emerged of a troubled, violent young man who appeared to have been on the radar of local authorities for years before the attack. stabbing on July 29 in Southport, a town. north of Liverpool.
After the attack, Britain was gripped by a series of riots as defamation of the attacker’s identity circulated on social media and messaging apps. Right-wing activists reinforced the false claim that he was an undocumented immigrant or newly arrived asylum seeker. Mr. Rudakubana is an English national born in Wales to Rwandan parents.
There was no evidence that he invoked any particular political or religious ideology, police and prosecutors said.
Between the ages of 13 and 14, he was referred three times to Prevent, the British anti-terrorist programme, for his violent tendencies, but these referrals were eventually dropped as he was determined each time that he does not meet the threshold of intervention.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said from Downing Street on Tuesday that the attack is a sign that terrorism is developing in the country, and that young people are surrounded by a “powerful wave that can be downloaded online.”
“We also see the extreme violence of lonely, misfit, young men in their bedrooms, accessing all kinds of devices on the Internet, desperate for fame,” Mr Starmer said. , and noted that some have become “focused on this extreme violence, apparently for”. about him.”
Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of weapons charges for possessing a knife used in an attack, for producing biological toxins and for “new possessions” said to be “of a kind that could be useful to a person carrying out or planning an activity.” on terrorism” after investigators found ricin, a deadly poison, and a PDF file titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual” in his home.
The judge could not sentence him to life in prison without parole because he was 17 at the time of the attack.
In 2019, Mr. Rudakubana was expelled after bringing a knife to school and a few months later returned to attack students with a hockey stick. He then enrolled in a school for children with special needs.
He was estranged from his family and community long before the attack and rarely left the house.
A week before the attack, Mr. Rudakubana tried to go to his former high school, police said, but his father ran out of the house and begged the taxi driver not to take him. The teenager finally returned home.
Questions have been raised about whether the authorities may have abused the ceasefire before they started the case. The government has said it will hold a public inquiry into the matter to find out more about what happened and what needs to be changed. But the case also highlighted the problem of violent youth who access images and messages online that lead to that disorder.
