Relatives of the victims burst into tears Thursday at the Liverpool court where the prosecutor gave the terrible account of the knife attack carried out by Axel Rudakabana, which cost the lives of three little girls in July in England.
• Also read: United Kingdom: alleged perpetrator of murder of three girls, attack causing riots, pleads guilty
The 18-year-old young man, who is due to be sentenced on Thursday, started screaming as soon as he arrived in the box around 12 p.m. GMT (7 a.m. in Montreal).
“I need to talk to a doctor. I don’t feel well,” he repeated, saying he had not eaten for 10 days and asking the judge “not to continue” the hearing.
He was evacuated and the hearing continued in his absence, revealing chilling details of the murders of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva, 9, on July 29, 2024.
Girls were chased and stabbed at a dance class inspired by star Taylor Swift in Southport, an attack that horrified the UK and sparked violent anti-immigration riots.
To everyone’s surprise, Axel Rudakubana, 17 years old at the time of the facts, pleaded guilty on Monday. He should be sentenced Thursday to a heavy prison sentence, but not to life imprisonment due to his age.
According to several media outlets, the accused had to be taken to hospital for treatment early in the morning, which has not been officially confirmed.
While in custody, he said he was “glad” the children were dead, according to prosecutor Deanna Heer.
This attack, which injured eight other children and two adults, was “premeditated and planned”, targeting “mainly little girls with the intention of killing them”, she said.
She described victims being attacked from the back and stabbed multiple times in a rampage of violence.
Children chased
The confessions of Axel Rudakubana, who gave no explanation for his actions, cut short the trial, initially scheduled to last four weeks.
“There is nothing that associates him with a political or religious ideology: he did not fight for a cause. His only goal was to kill,” said Deanna Heer, referring to the lack of “terrorist” qualification for these murders.
Weapons and a training manual from the jihadist organization Al-Qaeda were found with the teenager, who also admitted to having produced an extremely toxic poison, ricin.
-In tears from the first minutes, some members of the victims’ families left the room as soon as the description of the injuries began.
The prosecutor stressed that the “particularly atrocious injuries” inflicted on two little girls reflected the “sadism” of the assailant.
The body of Bebe King, 6 years old, had more than 120 stab wounds.
Videos showed children running screaming from the chaos of the dance hall, or a little girl, silent and terrified, being rescued in the toilet by a police officer.
“None of us will ever be able to answer this terrible question: (…) Why did he do that? Why was he not prevented from doing so?” asked Andrew Brown, founder of the residents’ group Stand up for Southport, to AFP.
The profile of Rudakubana that has emerged in recent days is that of a violent boy, almost out of school at 13, living in confinement and fascinated by mass killings.
Fascination morbide
Numerous missed opportunities to prevent him from taking action came to light, including his reporting three times to an extremism prevention program.
Axel Rudakubana was born in 2006 in Wales, into a Christian family originally from Rwanda.
Diagnosed with autism, he was excluded from his college after bringing a knife, but returned to attack his former classmates, whom he accused of racist harassment according to the Times.
Once out of the traditional school system, the teenager became more and more isolated.
The attack sparked a wave of anti-immigration and Islamophobic riots in dozens of towns in England and Northern Ireland, after far-right accounts spread rumors online about the identity of the suspect.
Keir Starmer, elected a few days earlier, had promised the greatest firmness, and more than 400 people have since been convicted of this violence.
