{"id":222193,"date":"2025-01-23T12:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T12:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/u-k-teenager-who-killed-3-girls-in-southport-stabbing-to-be-sentenced-today\/"},"modified":"2025-01-23T12:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T12:20:13","slug":"u-k-teenager-who-killed-3-girls-in-southport-stabbing-to-be-sentenced-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/u-k-teenager-who-killed-3-girls-in-southport-stabbing-to-be-sentenced-today\/","title":{"rendered":"U.K. Teenager Who Killed 3 Girls in Southport Stabbing to Be Sentenced Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/23\/multimedia\/23uk-southport-cwlh\/23uk-southport-cwlh-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"U.K. Teenager Who Killed 3 Girls in Southport Stabbing to Be Sentenced Today\" title=\"U.K. Teenager Who Killed 3 Girls in Southport Stabbing to Be Sentenced Today\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The teenager who killed three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack on a dance class in Southport, England, last summer will be sentenced on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Judge Julian Goose, who is presiding over the case, told the attacker, Axel Rudakubana, 18, that a life sentence equivalent would be inevitable after he pleaded guilty on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Rudakubana appeared in Liverpool Crown Court wearing a gray sweatsuit, with a blue medical mask covering his mouth and nose. When asked by the judge to confirm his name, he refused to speak and silently put his head in his lap.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But shortly after the sentencing hearing began, as prosecutors were reading out the details of the case against him, Mr. Rudakubana began screaming from the defendant\u2019s dock in the back of the room, \u201cI need to speak to a paramedic, because I feel ill.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The judge noted that medical specialists had examined Mr. Rudakubana that morning and determined him fit to attend the hearing. His lawyer told the judge the defendant had not eaten for a number of days, and Mr. Rudakubana continued to yell for several minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Judge Goose said: \u201cThese proceedings are being conducted under my control, not yours, Mr. Rudakubana. Do you understand?\u201d He then ordered Mr. Rudakubana removed from the court saying, \u201cI won\u2019t have him disrupting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Since Mr. Rudakubana pleaded guilty on Monday, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/21\/world\/europe\/uk-southport-axel-rudakubana-stabbing-violence.html\" title=\"\">a portrait of a deeply troubled young man obsessed with violence has emerged<\/a>, as has the fact that he was on the radar of the local authorities for years before <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/07\/30\/world\/europe\/uk-southport-knife-attack-victims.html\" title=\"\">the July 29 knife attack in Southport<\/a>, a town north of Liverpool.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After the attack, Britain was rattled by a series of riots as disinformation about the attacker\u2019s identity swirled on social media and messaging apps. False claims that he was an undocumented immigrant or newly arrived asylum seeker were amplified by <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/14\/world\/europe\/neo-nazi-uk-riots-elon-musk.html\" title=\"\">far-right agitators<\/a>. Mr. Rudakubana is a British citizen who was born in Wales to parents originally from Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There was no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology, the police and prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At age 13 and 14, he was referred three times to Prevent, a British counterterrorism program, because of his fixation on violence, but those referrals were ultimately dropped because it was determined each time that he did not meet the threshold for intervention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Prime Minister Keir Starmer said <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/21\/world\/europe\/uk-terrorism-law-southport-attack-starmer.html\" title=\"\">from Downing Street on Tuesday<\/a> that the attack was a sign that terrorism in the country was evolving, and that young people were being radicalized by \u201ca tidal wave of violence freely available online.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety,\u201d Mr. Starmer said, noting that some became \u201cfixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of a weapons charge for possession of the knife used in the attack, for production of a biological toxin and for \u201cpossessing information\u201d described as \u201cof a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism\u201d after investigators found ricin, a lethal toxin, and a PDF file titled \u201cMilitary Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual\u201d in his home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The judge will not be able to sentence him to a whole life order \u2014 a life sentence with the stipulation that the perpetrator should never be released from prison on parole \u2014 because he was just 17 at the time of the deadly attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 2019, Mr. Rudakubana was expelled after he brought a knife to school and a few months later he returned to attack a student with a hockey stick. He was then enrolled in a school for children with specialized needs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A local safeguarding agency said that he had struggled to integrate into the new school, and when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020 and schools closed across Britain, his isolation deepened. He had been <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/21\/world\/europe\/uk-southport-axel-rudakubana-stabbing-violence.html\" title=\"\">withdrawn from his family and the community<\/a> long before the attack, and barely left home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A week before the attack, Mr. Rudakubana tried to travel to his former high school, the police said, but his father ran out of the house and pleaded with the taxi driver not to take him. Eventually, the teenager returned to the house.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On July 29, though, he managed to travel by taxi to Hart Space, where a sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children ages 6 to 11 was underway during the summer break from school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Rudakubana rampaged through the room crowded with 26 children, stabbing several of them. The injuries suffered by Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so severe that they died inside the building, the police said, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside with the other children but soon collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and died the next day. Eight other children and two adults were wounded in the attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The case has raised questions about how the authorities may have missed opportunities to stop the violence before it began. The government has said it will conduct a public inquiry into the case to better understand what happened and what needs to change. But the case has also highlighted the issue of young people fixated on extreme violence who gain access to online images and messages that drive that obsession.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/23\/world\/europe\/uk-southport-stabbing-sentence-axel-rudakubana.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The teenager who killed three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack on a dance class in Southport, England, last summer will be sentenced on Thursday. Judge Julian Goose, who is presiding over the case, told the attacker, Axel Rudakubana, 18, that a life sentence equivalent would be inevitable after he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/23\/multimedia\/23uk-southport-cwlh\/23uk-southport-cwlh-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40951,155970,43104,1200,996,1177,163229,173118,10622,87246,169509,17302,31002,1603,503],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222195,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222193\/revisions\/222195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}