Southport killer’s father regrets not calling police over machete

The father of the Southport killer has told the public inquiry into the dance class stabbings he “regrets so much” not calling the police after he accepted a delivery of a machete his son had ordered.

Axel Rudakubana, then 17, killed three children at the Taylor Swift-themed event in the Merseyside town on 29 July last year.

Alphonse Rudakubana was giving evidence to the Southport Inquiry for a second day at Liverpool Town Hall.

Mr Rudakubana, speaking over a videolink from a remote location and unseen by anyone except the inquiry team, said: “I should have called the police.”

He added: “I regret I didn’t tell the police because if I had what happened on July 29 wouldn’t have happened. They would have come and checked everything.”

Mr Rudakubana told the inquiry he does not know why his son chose to attack a dance class.

“There’s no way to understand how he got there and chose that place,” he said.

He cried as he described how he was “clinging on to the hope” his son had simply gone for a walk when he left the house on the day of the attack.

However, when he had received a message from a member of his church to say there had been an attack in Southport, he “immediately feared” his son could be involved.

He said he should have alerted police to his son’s behaviour, including how he had tried to leave the house in a taxi a week before the knife attacks.

He told the court he persuaded a taxi driver not to take his son to his former school in Formby, as he feared he was going to carry out an attack.

Mr Rudakubana said his son, who had a jerry can in the house, asked him to buy petrol but he refused.

He told the inquiry: “I was scared. I thought [he] wanted to use petrol to start a fire at Range High School.”

The killer also asked his father to give him the machete he had ordered online but it had been hidden from him, and threatened his father with a knife.

Mr Rudakubana said: “We knew it was a police matter this time but I didn’t have the courage to do it on my own.

“I’m really, really sorry,” he said, adding he was ashamed he did not report it.

“The love I had for him overrode [my] good judgement.”

The inquiry heard in a message to his wife later that day, Mr Rudakubana said: “Our child needs to be protected. Imagine how those things have faded away and he could have been killed or imprisoned for good/for life.”

Mr Rudakubana also told the hearing he found a bow and arrow and a sealed box, later revealed to contain ricin, under his son’s bed a week before the attack.

Asked where his son got the money to buy these weapons, Mr Rudakubana revealed he would reward good behaviour with money, such as £40 for having a shower.

Nicholas Bowen KC, representing the bereaved families, told Mr Rudakubana of their “complete disdain for your excuses and the manner in which you have answered questions”.

Mr Rudakubana said when asked if he had anything to say to the families of the three girls who were murdered, he was “desperately sorry to them”.

“I cry for them all the time, because we have a reminder of my son who turned out to be a monster,” he said.

The inquiry later heard from the killer’s mother, Laetitia Muzayire, who began by reading out a statement.

She said: “As a mother, I grieve for my own son but most all for the innocent lives lost and that have been devastated.

“We are profoundly sorry and pray every day for the children and their families.

“There are many things that Alphonse and I wish we had done differently, anything that might have prevented the horrific event of 29 July 2024.”