A teenager who stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England has been sentenced to more than 50 years in prison for what a judge called "the most extreme, shocking and exceptionally serious crime".
Judge Julian Goose said 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana "wanted to try and carry out mass murder of innocent, happy young girls" and planned to kill as many people as he could.
Goose said that he couldn't impose a sentence of life without parole, because Rudakabana was under 18 at the time of the crime.
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But the judge said he must serve more than 51 years before being considered for parole and "it is likely he will never be released".
Rudakbuana was 17 when he attacked the children in the seaside town of Southport in July. He killed girls Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six. Eight other girls, ranging in age from seven to 13, were wounded, along with Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened.
The attack shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching. The government has announced a public inquiry into how the system failed to stop the killer, who had been referred to the authorities multiple times over his obsession with violence.
Defendant disrupts the hearing
Rudakubana faced three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder for those he wounded, and additional charges of possessing a knife, the poison ricin and an al-Qaida manual. He unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty on all charges on Monday.
But he wasn't in court to hear the passing of the sentence on Thursday.
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Hours earlier he had been led into the dock at Liverpool Crown Court in north-west England, dressed in a grey prison tracksuit.
But as prosecutors began outlining the evidence, Rudakubana interrupted by shouting from the dock that he felt ill and wanted to see a paramedic.
Goose urged lawyers to continue, then ordered the accused to be removed when he continued shouting. A person in the courtroom shouted "Coward!" as Rudakubana was taken out.
The hearing continued without him.
Horror on a summer day
The attack occurred on the first day of summer holidays when two dozen little girls were "gathered around the tables making bracelets and singing along to Taylor Swift songs", prosecutor Deanna Heer told the court. Rudakubana, armed with a large knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher.
He lunged at each child in turn, the prosecutor said, acting so quickly that it was only when teacher Leanne Lucas was stabbed herself that she realised what was happening.
The court was shown video of Rudakubana arriving at the Hart Space venue in a taxi and entering the building. Within seconds, screams erupted and children ran from the building in panic, some of them wounded. One girl made it to the doorway, but was pulled back inside by the attacker. She was stabbed 32 times but survived.
Gasps and sobs could be heard in court as the videos played.
Heer said two of the dead children "suffered particularly horrific injuries which are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature". One of the dead girls had 122 injuries, while another suffered 85 wounds.
Wrenching testimony from victims
Several relatives and survivors read emotional statements in court about the impact of the attack.
Lucas, 36, who ran the dance class, said "the trauma of being both a victim and a witness has been horrendous".
"I cannot give myself compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?" she said.
A 14-year-old survivor, who can't be named because of a court order, described her serious injuries and said that while she was physically recovering.
"We will all have to live with the mental pain from that day forever," she said.
"I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing that we think you're a coward."
The prosecutor read out a statement from the parents of Alice da Silva Aguiar, who said their daughter's killing had "shattered our souls".
"We used to cook for three. Now we only cook for two. It doesn't seem right," they said.
"Alice was our purpose for living, so what do we do now?"
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A teenager obsessed with violence
The prosecutor said Rudakubana had no political or religious cause, but had "a longstanding obsession with violence, killing, genocide".
"His only purpose was to kill. And he targeted the youngest and most vulnerable in society," Heer said, as relatives of the victims watched on.
Heer said that when he was taken to a police station, Rudakubana was heard to say: "It's a good thing those children are dead, I'm so glad, I'm so happy."
The killings triggered days of anti-immigrant violence across the country after far-right activists seized on incorrect reports that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in the UK. Some suggested the crime was a jihadi attack, and alleged that police and the government were withholding information.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Christian parents from Rwanda, and investigators have not been able to pin down his motivation. Police found documents about subjects including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs on his devices.
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In the years before the attack he had been reported to multiple authorities over his violent interests and actions.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told lawmakers on Tuesday that Rudakubana "was convicted of a violent assault against another child at school" and had multiple contacts with children's social care, mental health services and police, who were called to his home over his behaviour five times between 2019 and 2022.
He was referred three times to the government's anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14.
All of the agencies failed to spot the danger he posed.
The government has declared the case a wake-up call. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it must lead to "fundamental change" in the way the state protects its citizens, announcing a public inquiry into the failures that allowed Rudakubana to carry out his rampage with a knife he had ordered from Amazon.
He said laws might need updating to combat a "new threat" from violent individuals whose mix of motivations test the traditional definition of terrorism, "acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms".
The Crown Prosecution Service has defended the decision not to disclose details before Rudakubana went to court, saying "releasing that information earlier would have put the trial at risk."
UK contempt of court laws limit what can be reported before trial, in the interests of preventing jury bias.
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