Teen Who Killed Three Girls at Taylor Swift-Themed Dance Class in U.K. Faces Sentencing

LONDON (AP) — A violence-obsessed teenager is facing decades in prison when he is sentenced for stabbing three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed summer dance class.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, faces a sentencing hearing Thursday at Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England over the July 29 attack, which devastated the seaside town of Southport, shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The crime triggered anti-immigrant rioting and has led the government to reconsider its definition of terrorism, its approach to online radicalization and the way information about criminal suspects is made public.

Rudakubana was charged with three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder for those he injured, and additional charges of possessing a knife, the poison ricin and an al-Qaida manual. He unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty on all charges on Monday – sparing victims’ families a lengthy trial, but also potentially robbing them of answers.

Prosecutors plan to set out their case against Rudakubana in detail during Thursday’s hearing, with relatives of the victims watching in court.

The attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation when two dozen little girls were in a class to learn yoga and dance to the songs of Taylor Swift. What was supposed to be a day of joy turned to terror and heartbreak when Rudakubana, armed with a knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher.

He killed Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. Eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, were wounded, along with instructor Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened.

The killings in the northwest England town triggered days of anti-immigrant violence across the country after far-right activists seized on incorrect reports that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in the U.K. Some suggested the crime was a jihadi attack, and alleged that police and the government were withholding information.

Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales to Christian parents from Rwanda, and investigators have not been able to pin down his motivation. Police found documents about subjects including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs on his devices.

In the years before the attack he had been reported to multiple authorities over his violent interests and actions. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told lawmakers on Tuesday that Rudakubana “was convicted of a violent assault against another child at school” and had multiple contacts with children’s social care, mental health services and police, who were called to his home over his behavior five times between 2019 and 2022. He was referred three times to the government’s anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14.

All of the agencies failed to spot the danger he posed.

The government has declared the case a wake-up call. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it must lead to “fundamental change” in the way the state protects its citizens, announcing a public inquiry into the failures that allowed Rudakubana to carry out his rampage with a knife he had ordered from Amazon.

He said laws might need updating to combat a “new threat” from violent individuals whose mix of motivations test the traditional definition of terrorism, “acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms.”

The Crown Prosecution Service has defended the decision not to disclose details before Rudakubana went to court, saying “releasing that information earlier would have put the trial at risk.” U.K. contempt of court laws limit what can be reported before trial, in the interests of preventing jury bias.