LONDON — (AP) — A violence-obsessed teenager is facing decades in prison when he is sentenced Thursday for fatally stabbing three young girls in what prosecutors called a "sadistic" attack at a Taylor Swift-themed summer dance class.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, sat in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England, dressed in a gray prison tracksuit and with his head between his knees, as a judge prepared to sentence him for the July 29 attack, which devastated the seaside town of Southport, shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching.
But as prosecutors began outlining the evidence, Rudakubana interrupted by shouting from the dock that he felt ill and wanted to see a paramedic.
Judge Julian Goose urged lawyers to continue, then ordered the accused to be removed when he continued shouting.
Rudakubana was charged with 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.
The attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation 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 realized 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.
Gasps and sobs could be heard in court when the video was played.
Rudakubana killed Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. Eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, were wounded, along with Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened.
Heer said two of the dead children “suffered particularly horrific injuries which are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature.”
She 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,” she said, as relatives of the victims watched on in the courtroom.
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 crime triggered anti-immigrant rioting and has led the government to reconsider its definition of terrorism, its approach to online radicalization and the way information about criminal suspects is made public.
The killings in the northwest England town 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 U.K. 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 haven't been able to pin down his motivation. Police found documents about subjects including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs on his devices.
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 behavior 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 that 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 that 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.” U.K. contempt of court laws limit what can be reported before trial, in the interests of preventing jury bias.
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