Southport inquiry: killer’s father ‘sorry’ for failing to deal with son’s violent behaviour | Southport attack

Axel Rudakubana’s father has told the inquest into the 2024 Southport attack that his failure to deal with his son’s violent behavior had “disastrous consequences and for that I am extremely sorry”.

Alphonse Rudakubana said he was “very afraid” of his son and avoided confronting him, meaning he did not monitor the teenager’s internet activities. His son regularly searched for violent material on the Internet and continued to order a supply of weapons.

“The combination of fear and the desire to avoid confrontation by not investigating his activities and accepting his punishments undoubtedly prevented me from doing things that would be expected of a parent, such as monitoring his internet activities,” she said in a written statement. “This had disastrous consequences and I am very sorry for that.”

Giving evidence to the inquest at Liverpool town hall via video link on Wednesday, Alphonse Rudakubana said he accepted his son’s “share of responsibility” for his actions, which included stabbing three teenage girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club.

Alphonse Rudakubana also repeatedly criticized other institutions at the hearing, accusing teachers of unfairly selecting Axel for punishment and giving “malicious” directions to the anti-terrorism prevention plan, describing a school as “like a prison”.

The inquest also heard that the teenager’s parents and older brother found a pack of knives moments after the then 17-year-old left home to carry out the attack; This was the first time she had left the house alone in over two years. But they failed to call the police.

Days earlier, Alphonse Rudakubana had prevented his son from returning to his old school, where he was thought to be planning to attack students with whom he held a “dangerous grudge”.

Axel’s brother Dion Rudakubana said he was “surprised” when his younger brother left home alone on the morning of July 29 last year and initially feared he might be planning to attack someone.

But that concern was “quite quickly quashed” by his parents, who thought he was just going for a walk, he said: “The feeling was that this was a positive step; this was him dealing with a fear.”

Dion Rudakubana said his mother returned to bed to recover after the night shift, despite finding the opened package of knives and Axel inexplicably leaving the house.

The young boy was suspended from school for carrying a knife, and two years ago, when he was caught with a knife on a bus, he told the police he was planning to stab someone. The inquest heard his family had been hiding kitchen knives since 2019.

Dion Rudakubana said he believed his brother had not left home alone since March 17, 2022, when he was reported missing by his family and was found with a knife on a bus by police officers. Axel told officers at the scene that he planned to kill someone to delete their social media profiles.

Alphonse Rudakubana, who gave sometimes combative evidence to the public inquiry, denied “going around trying to find any excuses”. [his] Son’s criminal behavior” He accused teachers at Range high school of unfairly excluding him before he was permanently suspended for attacking a student and carrying a knife in October 2019.

Alphonse Rudakubana said that in early 2024, his son’s behavior at home became “very scary.” He recalled an incident in which the teenager poured oil on his father’s head and threatened to kill him if he left the house, telling him: “It could take a day, it could take a week, it could take a month. [but] Believe me, I will kill you.”

He told the inquest: “I had lost control. [Axel]. As a father, I had no authority over him. He was questioning everything about me; the way I talk, why am I at home, my mother must be at home, I must be working.

“She called me Alphonse because I didn’t deserve ‘Daddy’; I was reduced to someone who fed her and did whatever she wanted. I had no power to stop her from accessing anything she wanted to look at on the internet.”

He said no one knew the teenager was watching extremely violent, anti-Semitic material, anti-Islamic and sexist images: “There was another side to him that I didn’t know about.”

Earlier, Dion Rudakubana said he did not know why his brother was targeting young girls, but said it might be because “children are very valuable to society, they are the future of society, and if children are harmed, it harms society very badly. I think it would be something along those lines, but that’s what I say in hindsight.”

Detectives never found a clear motive as to why the teenager killed three teenage girls and stabbed 10 people at a summer holiday club, and consistently ruled out terrorism.

Dion Rudakubana said his younger brother had stacked numerous packages in the living room and neither he nor his family were allowed to touch them. In his written statement he said he was “concerned there was something bad inside the packages” and told the inquest he suspected it could be a weapon or “something absolutely dangerous”.

But that fear “was never overwhelming enough for me to go and say something,” he said.

Asked whether it was “too dangerous” for the troubled teenager to have access to weapons, given his history of violence, inquest lawyer Richard Boyle said: “Yes.” [but] “I didn’t think these boxes would pose an imminent threat to my life.”

Boyle asked if he thought about the threat to others. He replied: “No, I didn’t take that into consideration considering how isolated these samples were. [of Axel Rudakubana being violent to others]. I did not associate any risk of harm with anyone outside the home. inside the house [that] “This was evident every day.”

Dion said he returned from college three days before the attack, on July 26, and his father made a “vague” reference to his brother having “done something bad” days before.

He said he only later learned it was related to his younger brother being stopped by his father from getting into a taxi after he was believed to have been planning to attack pupils at Range high school in Formby, from which he was expelled in 2019.

In his written statement, Dion said that his father was “scared” of the 17-year-old boy in the days before the attack and that this was “an unusual situation.”

On July 26, he texted a friend and said that his father told him, “Your brother is dangerous, he could kill you.” He told the inquest: “I don’t think he directly said ‘It could kill you’, rather he indicated it was life-threatening and that’s what I felt.”

The investigation continues.