A taxi driver who dropped triple killer Axel Rudakubana at a Southport dance studio and then drove away as he launched his attack has apologised to the families of the victims for not doing more.
Alice Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were killed at the Taylor Swift-themed class on 29 July last year by Rudakubana, who was later jailed for a minimum of 52 years.
The inquiry was told that Rudakubana was picked up from his home in nearby Banks by Gary Poland from One Call Taxis. He got into the back, wearing a green hoodie with the hood up and a COVID-type face mask.
The pair did not speak during the journey, but when Rudakubana got out of the taxi in Hart Street, and was asked “cash or card?”, he walked off without paying.
Mr Poland got out of his vehicle and pursued Rudakabuna as he walked down an alleyway to a vehicle body shop, but the killer told him and workers at a nearby garage: “What are you going to do about it?”
Mr Poland got back into his car and drove down the alleyway that led to the Hart Space, telling him: “You pay now, or the police are on their way, you f**king knob.”
He saw Rudakubana as he tried the door to the ground floor, and then found the door to the upper floors was unlocked and went inside.
The taxi driver turned his vehicle around, but as he prepared leave, children could be seen in the rear dashcam running alongside the taxi, and it was possible to hear their screams, the inquiry was told.
Mr Poland looked in the rearview mirror, then drove off. He took another fare before returning home and eventually calling the police at 12.36pm, 50 minutes after the attack.
It was only then that they were able to identify Rudakubana, who had refused to tell them who he was when he was arrested by two unarmed police officers.
Mr Poland told the inquiry, in a statement: “On reflection, I do consider that I should have called the police earlier. In hindsight, I wish I had done, and it is something that I think about every day – what I should have done, and how this is my fault because I drove him there.
“I regret not helping the children, their screams were harrowing, and I can still hear them when I think back to that day.
“I regret not doing more. There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t think about that day and what ifs. What if I had called the police? What if I had got out of my car? What if I had apprehended him for not paying me? But I do not know the answers.”
He said he thought there was a “gunman shooting at people” and believed it was the person he had just been shouting at to pay and threatening to call the police, and was worried about becoming a target.
Mr Poland admitted hearing the screams and seeing children running out of the building and said he “just panicked and was not thinking clearly.”
“I did what I did based upon fear, shock and panic, these are human emotions which I could not control. I can only say that I panicked, and I fled for my own safety,” Mr Poland added.
“I cannot imagine what the victims and the families of the victims have been through, and they have my deepest sympathy for what happened that day.”
As he drove off, Mr Poland said children were running “like a stampede for their lives” and added: “I was in a state of complete mortal terror and shock.”
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Tattooed and wearing a black zip-up top, white t-shirt and glasses, he told the inquiry: “I just remember seeing the face. I can’t sleep at night, I shut my eyes, I see his face, it’s just there all the time in my head.”
However, in a phone call to his friend, who ran the vehicle body shop next door to the Hart Space, recorded on the dashcam after he pulled up around the corner, Mr Poland said: “I’ve just dropped a lad off, I chased him down your thing. He ran next door and I think he shot some people.
“Do you not hear screaming and shots go off? He’s just f**king shot everyone ain’t he?”
His friend, Julian Medlock, told him: “Lucky you weren’t in it” and Mr Poland added: “He shot upstairs and I heard these f**king shots and I f**king shot off Jim. Lucky he didn’t shoot me, weren’t it?”
Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “The outside observer listening to this exchange may pick up a sense of disbelief from you about what had happened, but not ‘mortal terror and shock’
“That wasn’t your state at the time that you made this call, was it?”
Mr Poland replied: “All I can say is I was in shock and I didn’t know what was what.”
Mr Moss added: “At any time during this call, did you say anything about those young girls or their welfare?”
Mr Poland said: “I don’t think so. I really don’t know.”
Mr Moss said: “The fact that you were prepared to confront him verbally might be thought to suggest you are not a shrinking violet, would that be fair?”
“Correct,” Mr Poland replied.
He told the inquiry: “If I thought he had a knife, I probably would have got out and disarmed him. It’s only a knife.”
When Rudakubana went into the building, he thought that he had gone to get him his money and he would wait.
“I was thinking, he’s not said much, I’m thinking, he’s gone to get some money, and then that’s when, a minute or two later, I heard all these screams, and I thought, what’s going on there.’
“What I thought I heard was gunshots, four or five gunshots. That’s when I got worried, and I thought, I’m not going to confront anybody with a gun. I don’t think anybody would.”
The inquiry continues.
