A senior police officer in charge on the day of the Southport attack today said he feared Axel Rudakubana was not acting alone because he couldn’t believe one person could inflict so many injuries.
Chief Inspector Andrew Hughes was one of two force incident managers in the Merseyside Police control room when 999 calls reporting a ‘boy with a knife’ started to come in, just after 11.45am on July 29 last year.
Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were murdered and 10 others injured by 17-year-old Rudakubana when he went on the rampage at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class they were attending, in the seaside town.
Mr Hughes told the public inquiry, investigating Rudakubana’s crimes, that armed response vehicles were immediately deployed but, while they were en-route to the scene, he instructed unarmed officers to also go and help if it was safe to do so.
Two officers – Sergeant Gregory Gillespie and Police Constable Luke Holden, who was armed with a Taser – bravely entered the building and quickly managed to detain Rudakubana.
But Mr Hughes said that, as many more reports of casualties came in, his initial fear was that Rudakubana was not acting as a lone wolf and other perpetrators might be at the scene who could pose a risk to his officers.
‘The amount of casualties… I found it difficult to understand how one person could inflict that many injuries to that many people, so a consideration for me was that there might be more offenders that we hadn’t yet encountered,’ he said.
The inquiry heard that Rudakubana refused to give his name to police at the scene, so was not identified until taxi driver Gary Poland, 52, who had dropped him off at the Hart Space, where the class was being held, called them 50 minutes later.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for 52 years for the murders of Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, at Liverpool Crown Court in January
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were all murdered in the atrocity on July 29, 2024
Gary Poland, the taxi driver who took Rudakubana to the dance class, has apologised for failing to call police for almost an hour
He told them that he had picked up the teenager from an address, in the nearby village of Banks, which immediately flagged Rudakubana as a resident and that there was a warning marker for carrying knives against his name.
The log also noted: ‘He has been logging onto school websites which involve school mass shootings and he talks about guns and beheadings.’
Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, the Government’s counter-terror strategy, by a special school he attended for looking at images of violence on computers in lessons.
Mr Hughes said this information prompted him to deploy more armed officers to search Rudakubana’s home in Old School Close.
‘There were a number of scenarios I was considering,’ the officer said. ‘There could be other offenders… this is part of some sort of planned operation to lure police in. There could be a threat to officers when they arrive.
‘He could have injured family members, there could be injured people at that location (too).’
The inquiry heard that, after the initial 999 call, at 11.46am, police and paramedics were initially directed to a rendezvous point a mile and a half away from the scene for their own safety.
But Mr Hughes overruled that decision after five minutes because he felt police had an ‘immediate duty to protect life.’
Chairman Sir Adrian Fulford is overseeing the inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall
By then a second 999 call had come in stating that an eight-year-old girl had been stabbed who was awake and breathing, but another child had been injured who was not.
Mr Hughes accepted that ‘perhaps’ he could have declared a major incident earlier than 12.14pm, but he said he had been waiting for the number of casualties to be confirmed.
He claimed declaring a major incident earlier would not have made a difference to the number of emergency resources available or the speed that they got there.
John Goss, counsel for the inquiry, said there had been ‘learning’ from the Manchester Arena suicide bombing in May 2017 – where ambulance crews were held back from the scene and fire fighters did not arrive for more than two hours.
The barrister said in some situations it may be appropriate even, for example, where a perpetrator has a knife to deploy unarmed officers ‘forward with caution.’
Mr Hughes also said although the Southport attack was a ‘very chaotic’ incident he felt his training had prepared him well and he did not feel overwhelmed.
‘It was a very chaotic, horrific incident which gets landed on you with no warning whatsoever but I felt able to discharge my duties effectively,’ he said.
Cab driver Mr Poland has apologised for failing to stop and help the injured girls and is due to give evidence in person tomorrow.
The inquiry, at Liverpool Town Hall, continues.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .