Police 're-examining' Southport killer's parents

Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in the 29 July 2024 attack

The parents of the Southport killer could be re-investigated by police after their comments during the public inquiry into the attack.

Merseyside Police confirmed its detectives will examine transcripts after Alphonse Rudakubana and Laetitia Muzayire gave verbal evidence last week.

The Southport Inquiry heard their son, Axel Rudakubana, had displayed disturbing and violent behaviour for years before he murdered three children and injured eight others at a Taylor Swift themed dance workshop on 29 July last year.

The force had previously considered charges against his parents, but said in June the evidence did not meet the threshold for a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service.

A spokesperson for Merseyside Police said the force would now "assess whether new information was provided [to the inquiry] that wasn't known".

During the hearings, Alphonse Rudakubana accepted he had intercepted a package containing a machete that his son had ordered online in June 2023 and hid it on top of a wardrobe - but did not tell any agencies including mental health teams, police or social services.

He told the inquiry: "I regret that I didn't tell the police because, if I did, what happened on the 29th wouldn't have happened.

"They would have come and checked everything in his room."

The girls' families said the evidence at the inquiry into the killings was "deeply distressing"

He also said despite warnings from teachers that Rudakubana was looking up gory and violent images online, he was too afraid to restrict his teenaged son's internet access in case it provoked a violent response.

"I had no authority as a father, I had no power at all left to stop him from accessing anything he wanted online," he said.

Mr Rudakubana also failed to report that his son had tried to leave the house in a taxi on 22 July 2024, a week before the attack, to head to Range High School in Formby which had expelled him in 2019.

He admitted stopping his son from leaving because he feared he would launch an attack on the school, and believed he had been carrying a knife although he did not see it.

'Stayed silent'

After the parents had given evidence, the families of the girls killed in the attack -Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and six-year-old Bebe King - released a statement condemning their failure to act.

Elsie's parents, Jenni and David Stancombe, said they believed Mr Rudakubana and Mrs Muzayire "should be held to account for what they allowed to happen".

"They knew how dangerous he was, yet they stayed silent," they said.

"They failed not only as parents but as members of our society."

Bebe's parents, Lauren and Ben King, added: "What we're struggling to comprehend is not just [the killer's parents'] failure then, but their failure now - to acknowledge, to take responsibility, to face up to what they allowed to happen."

Solicitor Chris Walker, from law firm Bond Turner, which is representing the families of the murdered girls, told the Daily Mail newspaper his clients "fully supported" any reopening or re-examination of the evidence about Rudakubana's parents.

"We are confident that a criminal investigation will conclude that an offence has been committed," he added.

Oral hearings in the first phase of the Southport Inquiry, which examined the attack itself and Rudakubana's background, are now complete.

Inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford is expected to report back in spring 2026, before the opening of the second phase, which will look at the issue of young people becoming obsessed with violence and how to manage them.