Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the murders in January 2025 and was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison. The Southport Inquiry's first report was released on Monday, listing five key findings. The inquiry found the attack was 'foreseeable and avoidable' and could have been prevented if the family's concerns had been shared with authorities.
The inquiry identified five major areas of systemic failure: absence of risk ownership, critical failures in information sharing, misunderstanding of autism, lack of oversight of online activity, and significant parental failures. No agency or multi-agency structure accepted responsibility for assessing and managing the grave risk posed by Axel Rudakubana. Critical information was repeatedly lost, diluted, or poorly managed across agencies.
Axel Rudakubana's conduct was wrongly attributed to his autism spectrum disorder, leading to inaction. There was a lack of oversight of Axel Rudakubana's online activity, which provided clear indications of his violent preoccupations. Axel Rudakubana's parents did not provide boundaries, permitted knives and weapons to be delivered to the home, and failed to report crucial information in the days leading up to the attack.
In 2022, Axel Rudakubana went missing and was found with a knife on a bus, admitting to police he wanted to stab someone. Axel Rudakubana downloaded an academic text containing an Al-Qaeda training manual and a wide range of violent material online. Axel Rudakubana was referred to the government's Prevent programme three times.
At least six public bodies are expected to be criticised in the inquiry's findings. The inquiry's phase one report is 763 pages long. Axel Rudakubana's parents left the area on the day he was arrested and never returned.
A few families who lived on the street have left the area because of what happened. The attack occurred at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport in July 2024, where Rudakubana killed three young girls and inflicted life-altering injuries on ten others.