The father of a survivor of the Southport attack has said his daughter is “our hero” after escaping from the “coward” who stabbed her.
The girl, who is referred to at the public inquiry as C3, was one of eight children injured along with two adults at a Taylor Swift-themed class in the Merseyside seaside town on 29 July last year.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, murdered Elsie Dot Stancomb, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, in what the chairman Sir Adrian Fulford called “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
The surviving victims and their families have been granted anonymity during the inquiry, with C3’s father the first to give evidence at Liverpool Town Hall.
Reading a statement on behalf of him and his wife, he told how their daughter was the first girl to escape the scene at the Hart Space building.
“She runs from the building and hides briefly behind a parked car, before finding refuge by jumping to relative safety through an open car door. It was troubling for us to see what she had to go through, before either of her parents had arrived at the scene,” he said.
“Our daughter was stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see.
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“Although she didn’t know what was happening – she knew she had to run. She ran out of the studio door, down the stairs, and out of the building.”
He said she can be seen “looking scared, confused and pained” in CCTV footage of the incident, adding: “It was troubling for us to see what she had to go through, before either of her parents had arrived at the scene.”
“We are so thankful and proud that despite being critically injured, she was able to make the decisions she did in that terrible moment.”
The girl’s father said his daughter “continues to astound” her parents with the way she dealt with the attack and her recovery, saying: “It has been inspiring for us to witness.”
He said she has difficulty sleeping, experiences flashbacks, looks over her shoulder scanning for potential danger when she leaves the house, has a fear of loud noises and has to turn off some songs when they come on the radio.
“Many people have said to us that ‘kids are resilient’, but resilience is the ability to recover quickly, which doesn’t feel appropriate when describing our daughter in these circumstances. She has not fully recovered. She bears the scars, both physically and emotionally, of that terrible day,” he said.
“Our daughter knows that she is loved.
“It is through this support and love that she will continue to thrive. We couldn’t be prouder of her. She is our hero.”
Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January and is being investigated over an alleged attack on a prison officer at Belmarsh prison in May.
The public inquiry, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in January, is looking into whether the attack could or should have been prevented, given what was known about the killer.
Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, had contact with police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and mental health services, and was referred to the government’s anti-extremism Prevent scheme three times before the murders.
A rapid review into his contact with Prevent found his case should have been kept open and that he should have been referred to Channel, another anti-terror scheme.
