A retired judge’s nine-week inquiry into the 2024 Taylor Swift-themed stabbing attack in Southport concluded that the killings could and should have been prevented through earlier and more effective intervention by Rudakubana’s parents and relevant state agencies, according to a report released Monday.
The inquiry, led by Adrian Fulford, released a 763-page document that cataloged multiple points over many years where parents or authorities, in the report’s account, could have stepped in as Axel Rudakubana’s well-known fixation on violence grew. Fulford said one of the report’s “most striking conclusions” was “the sheer number of missed opportunities over many years to intervene meaningfully, which directly contributed to the failure to avert this disaster,” adding, “The consequences were catastrophic.”
Fulford’s report focused on how cases moved through agencies and referrals, describing what he called an “inappropriate merry-go-round of referrals, assessments, case-closures and ‘hand-offs,’” in which, in his view, Rudakubana’s file was repeatedly passed between public sector bodies. Police, social workers and educators were said to have been aware of problems involving Rudakubana before the attack, even as he was not stopped from carrying out the violence.
The report said Rudakubana, who was 17 when he carried out the attack in northwestern England, is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 52 years. He was convicted for killing Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6, and for wounding eight children and two adults.
Among the episode sequences described in the report were interactions with the youth justice system and referrals connected to concerns about extremism. Rudakubana was convicted in 2019 at age 13 of assaulting another child at school with a hockey stick and was placed under supervision of a local service for youth offenders, the report said. He was referred three times between 2019 and 2021 to the government’s anti-extremism program Prevent for expressing interest in school shootings, the 2017 London Bridge attack, the Irish Republican Army and the Middle East, with each case closed because he was not judged to be susceptible to becoming a terrorist, the report said.
The inquiry also pointed to multiple contacts with police during the same period. It said local police were called to Rudakubana’s home five times over unspecified concerns about his behavior, and that he was given mental health and educational support but later appeared to stop engaging with social workers. The report said he was expelled after taking a knife to school and hardly ever attended subsequent classes.
Fulford highlighted a March 2022 incident in which Rudakubana was caught on a bus with a knife, told police he wanted to stab someone, and admitted trying to make poison. The report said that, taken together with other warning signs it described, those factors should have sparked an arrest that would likely have led to a search of his home, where investigators later found ricin hidden under his bed and a downloaded document described as an al-Qaida training manual, according to the account in the report.
The report said Rudakubana was not arrested and was released to his parents, who feared him and repeatedly failed to report knives they believed he had purchased, as well as his troubling behavior and threats. While Fulford outlined failings by the parents that he said could have prevented the tragedy, the report said he argued they should not be “vilified” for what became a challenging situation. He said the family’s life at home “must have become little short of a nightmare,” using words attributed to Rudakubana’s own father describing Rudakubana as a “monster.”
Following the Southport attack, the report said, police searched Rudakubana’s home and discovered the ricin and the document, and police concluded the crimes should not be classed as terrorism because he had no discernible political or religious cause or motivation. The report’s recommendations, Fulford said, were aimed at correcting failures that left the public exposed to escalating risks even after multiple touchpoints.
Starmer said the report was “truly harrowing and profoundly disturbing” and told the government’s response in terms of public safety. He said, “While nothing will ever bring these three little girls back, I’m determined to make the fundamental changes needed to keep the public safe.” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said new legislation would be introduced to address violent plots that are not considered terrorism, saying, “Unlike terrorist attacks, if you are planning an attack without an underlying ideology, there is no crime on the statute book,” according to the report.
While the inquiry’s conclusions underscore how earlier intervention might have prevented the killings, the report also sets the focus on systemic decision-making—how agencies assess risk, keep cases open or close them, and act when warnings accumulate rather than dissipate across referrals.