A senior police officer has warned there are many young men viewing similar material to the Southport attacker and said he fears there could be another attack.
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 Axel Rudakubana, then aged 17.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Winstanley of Lancashire police told the inquiry into the killings: “Sadly, there are other children out there with similar interests and behaviours that [the Southport attacker] displayed.”
The officer said there was a “real challenge in managing children’s mental health” and children’s mental health services were “working extremely hard, doing their best, but are overburdened.”
He warned of a group of children who have “got what appears to be completely unregulated access to the internet, where at the click of a button, they can see the most horrific and horrendous incidents.”
“They can go online and purchase things, which, frankly, I see no legitimate purpose for – crossbows and machetes,” the officer added.
“Barely a day goes by where we look at our morning summaries and there hasn’t been an incident the day before where somebody has either been attacked or threatened with a machete.
“There is no other purpose for these weapons, other than to intimidate, enforce violence or deliver violence on people.”
The officer told the inquiry: “It is far too easy for our young people, particularly those who are suffering with their mental health, to be influenced and to see this material, and to then get access to weapons that allow them to carry out, on occasion, atrocities, the like of which I hope we never see again, but I fear that we will.
“I accept completely that Lancashire Constabulary and policing has a significant role in this and we need to improve but these are things that as a society, there needs to be systemic change around if we’re going to make a difference.”
Read more on Southport stabbings:
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Locking door ‘wouldn’t have helped’
Attacker told officers ‘I want to stab someone’
The inquiry has heard that two years before the Southport attacks, on 17 March 2022, Rudakubana was 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 bus driver called police because he had got on a bus and refused to pay. When the officers spoke to him he admitted he was carrying a small kitchen knife, the inquiry heard.
However, Rudakubana was treated as a vulnerable person, taken home by police and referred for social services and mental health support under a process called “protecting vulnerable persons” (PVP).
A probationary officer at the time recorded that on the way back to his home in the police car, Rudakubana told the officers “I want to stab someone”, but said he did not have access to information about concerns Rudakubana was viewing material about high school massacres.
‘A very serious missed opportunity’
Nicholas Moss KC, for the inquiry, said: “The fact that officers on the ground didn’t have that full picture, but it would have led to an arrest and search if they had had that full picture, must mean that this was a very serious missed opportunity to identify and address the risks posed by [the Southport attacker].”
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Mr Winstanley agreed but added that at the time they considered custody as “being a place of last resort for children”.
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The inquiry continues.
