Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was referred to the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme several times before the attack over his general obsession with violence, government sources have told the BBC.
On Monday the 18-year-old admitted stabbing three young girls to death in July last year at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
He also pleaded guilty to a range of charges including the attempted murders of eight children and two adults, producing a biological toxin, ricin, and the possession of an al-Qaeda training manual – a terror offence.
Despite this his case has never been treated as terror-related by police as he did not appear to follow an ideology, such as Islamism or racial hatred, and instead appeared to be motivated by an interest in extreme violence.
After he admitted his crimes the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) described him as a “young man with a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence” and said he had shown no signs of remorse.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents in 2006, and moved to the Southport area in 2013.
He attended St Patrick’s Primary School after briefly being enrolled at Holy Family Catholic Primary School.
He took acting classes at the Pauline Quirk Academy and appeared in a promotional video for BBC Children in Need in 2018, which has since said it had no affiliation with him.
The BBC removed the video from its websites in the wake of the Southport attack.
Rudakubana went on to attend Range High School in Formby but he began having problems with violence in Year 9.
He was described as having a volatile character, anger issues, and was prone to act with violence.
Fellow pupils remember him having an obsession with despotic figures including Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler. He is also known to have accessed information about the IRA.
Rudakubana was excluded from Range High School in October 2019 at the age of 13, after which he returned to the school in December 2019 with a hockey stick and assaulted a pupil, breaking their wrist. He had to be restrained by a teacher.
After this, he attended The Acorns School, which provides specialist education for those with extra needs, and was then enrolled in Presfield High School & Specialist College.
He only attended sixth form there for a few days and was largely dealt with by home visits. The school would sometimes ask for police to attend when they visited.
It was revealed last August that he had an “autism spectrum disorder diagnosis” and had been “unwilling to leave the house and communicate with family for a period of time”.
Neighbours on the street where he and his family lived in Banks, West Lancashire, about 6 miles (9km) from Southport, have told the BBC that the police visited the home on several occasions in the months leading up to the Southport attack.
On the day of the attack, a doorbell camera caught him pacing outside of his family home, before catching a taxi to the dance studio where he would carry out the stabbings.
Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, were all killed.
Initially, Rudakubana pleaded not guilty or had not guilty pleas entered for him to the charges laid against him but changed these to guilty on Monday, the first day of his trial.
He is due to be sentenced on Thursday and is expected to be given a life sentence.
However, he cannot be sentenced to a whole-life term for his crimes because he is under the age of 21.
