The parents of the Southport killer struggled to deal with his violent outbursts, especially as he grew “older and stronger”, the inquiry into last year’s stabbings in the town has heard.
It comes on the day that police said they didn’t arrest Axel Rudakubana two years before his attack, when he was found on a bus with a knife and instead treated him as a vulnerable person.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July last year by Rudakubana, then aged 17.
The inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall heard about a series of 999 calls, in the first of which, on 5 November 2021, his mother told Merseyside Police that her son had been smashing the house up, throwing things around and throwing things at people.
He was 15 years old and had autism, she said.
An officer followed up with a medium-risk vulnerable child report, describing how the teenager had been on the sofa at home when a stranger knocked on the front door.
Rudakubana did not like people coming to the house, people seeing him, or his parents going outside.
The knocking on the door made him agitated and he had thrown things at the wall and made a mess. He had calmed down on hearing the police had been called and was calm at the point the officer called.
Then, on 30 November, Rudakubana’s parents called again, saying he had become angry at the food they had cooked him for tea and had thrown a plate of food at a rental car and jumped on the car.
When officers arrived five hours later, his father Alphonse Rudakubana said he did not want a criminal investigation and said he was seeking advice and support and there was no arrest.
The following year, Rudakubana, then aged 15, had been reported missing from home by his mother, who told police that he was severely autistic and had taken a knife from the kitchen.
They found him after a driver called police because he had boarded a bus and refused to pay.
When the officers spoke to him, he admitted that he was carrying a small kitchen knife, before handing it to them, the inquiry heard.
However, Rudakubana was treated as a vulnerable person, taken home by police and a referral was made for social services and mental health support under a process called “protecting vulnerable persons” (PVP).
PC David Fairclough, who was a probationary officer at the time on 17 March 2022, told the inquiry: “First and foremost, he was a child. I appreciate he wasn’t a young child – he was 15 at that time – however, he was presenting as younger than that.
“I was aware of his neurodiverse condition. I didn’t think custody would be appropriate. I still wasn’t sure at that time whether he was going through a mental health episode.
“He had been fully compliant at all times, he’s handed the knife over at the first opportunity, there’d been no resistance.”
Rudakubana said ‘I want to stab someone’, inquiry told
However, on the way back to his home in the police car, Rudakubana told the officers “I want to stab someone.”
PC Fairclough told the inquiry: “He was calm and I remember looking in the rear view mirror and he smiled. It’s not a normal reaction. I wasn’t expecting that. He wasn’t remorseful.”
Rudakubana went on to give what Nicholas Moss KC, the counsel for the inquiry, described as a “rather bizarre account” of why he wanted to stab people.
“It was to the effect that he had been told by his psychiatrist that the best way for his phone to be seized by police was for him to commit a serious offence.
“And the reason why he wanted his phone to be seized was that there were embarrassing videos on his social media accounts that he couldn’t get rid of and wanted deleted.”
‘Fixated on getting videos deleted’
PC Fairclough said Rudakubana did not appear to accept “the consequences or the severity of what he was saying” and seemed to be “fixated on this issue” of getting the videos deleted.
He then made a “one-line statement” to the effect of “I’ve also thought about poisoning people” to get his mobile phone seized, again while smiling.
“Even though he was coming out with these extremely concerning comments, his behaviour still suggested otherwise.
“He had made no threats, he had the means at that time to stab someone had he wished, and he hadn’t carried that out, so his actions were very different to what he was telling us in the vehicle.”
When they arrived at the family home, Rudakubana’s mother “appeared stressed”, the officer said, adding: “I think they appeared at the wits’ end. I think the mother claimed she was crying out for extra support, and she felt it was falling on deaf ears.”
After the incident, the officers reported: “Axel is highly autistic. Axel does not have capacity and prosecution is not appropriate in this instance.”
Mr Moss said: “It would be a crude, unfair overstatement to suggest that for somebody with an autism diagnosis, they are in any way automatically a higher risk of offending to others.
“But had your training led you to be aware of a risk that, for some individuals, a background diagnosis of autism might be a risk factor?”
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The officer said: “Potentially too much pressure is put on not arresting children unless absolutely necessary.
“I also feel too much emphasis was put on AR’s mental health, his neurodiverse condition, rather than what was right in front of me and what he was disclosing at the time.”
The inquiry continues.
