There is no death penalty in the United Kingdom. The maximum sentence reserved for even the most heinous of crimes is a “whole-life order,” in which the perpetrator has no chance of release. There is, however, a caveat. The offender must be at least 18-years-old at the time the offense occurred.
At the time that Axel Rudakubana entered a Southport, England, dance class last July, where girls aged five to ten had gathered to dance to Taylor Swift music and make friendship bracelets, and brutally stabbed three young girls to death and wounded 10 others, he was 9 days short of that milestone. Thus, he was sentenced in the Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday to a minimum of 52 years in prison. This monster will be eligible for release at the age of 70.
Still a stiff penalty some might say? Not if one considers the gravity of the offense.
The Spectator’s David Shipley recounted the details of the horrific crime scene:
He moved quickly through the room, killing innocent, defenceless children.Rudakubana killed three girls and stabbed another ten people. Alice, one of his victims, was nine. She was taken to hospital, but her injuries were so severe she died the following morning….Bebe, another victim, was six. She was found on the landing outside the studio door. She had ‘defensive injuries’ and had suffered at least 122 sharp force injuries. Elsie, the final girl killed by Rudakubana, was seven. Her 85 sharp force injuries were so severe that she could not have been saved. Their injuries were described in court as ‘sadistic’. One girl who survived had 32 stab wounds. While under arrest at the police station, Rudakubana said: ‘It’s a good thing those children are dead…I’m so glad…so happy’ and: ‘Literally, such a good thing those kids are dead, six years old… So happy, six years old. It’s a good thing they are dead, yeah’.
Rudakubana is not an illegal migrant. According to The Washington Post, he was born in Cardiff, Wales, to parents who had immigrated to England from Rwanda. He “has attended British schools his whole life.”
Investigators told The New York Times that Rudakubana “was obsessed by violence and genocide.” The Times reported that prior to the murders:
The teenager had become increasingly withdrawn, even from his family. He rarely left his home, a red brick house on a quiet cul-de-sac in the village of Banks, near the west coast of England.
Alone with his thoughts, he scrolled endlessly through online images and descriptions of war, torture and death, feeding an obsession with genocide and killing.
Rudakubana’s grisly attack did not come out of the blue. The Times described him as a “deeply troubled individual whose fascination with violence was brought to the authorities’ attention when he was just 13, and who had been known to a number of state agencies for years.”
He had been referred three times to Prevent, a counterterrorism program, when he was 13 and 14 because of his fixation on violence, the government confirmed on Monday. He had also come into contact with the police, the courts, social services and mental health services in the years before the attack.
During a search of his home, police found ricin, a lethal toxin, “as well as a PDF file titled ‘Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual.'”
Oddly, a spokeswoman for the Merseyside Police explained that the case was not treated as terrorism because “his online history showed a wide interest in conflict, terrorism and genocide, and there was no evidence that he subscribed to a single political or religious ideology. … No one ideology was uncovered.”
The Independent reported that Rudakubana’s parents contacted the police on four occasions in 2021 and 2022 for help with their son. Officers from Lancashire Constabulary went to the home, “but each time failed to identify the threat he posed.”
The last call came in May 2022. According to the Independent, Rudakubana’s father told police that his son’s behavior “had escalated because they denied him access to a computer.”
The previous call to the police was made two months earlier. His mother called to report her son missing. The police tracked Rudakubana down on a bus. He was carrying a knife. Officers brought him back to the family home, “where they gave the mother advice on securing knives in the home.”
Numerous red flags emerged leading up to this brutal massacre, yet they went either unnoticed or unheeded, as they so often do.
It’s no wonder Britons don’t feel safe. A YouGov poll released this week found that 61% of respondents do not feel confident about the state’s ability to “reduce the risk” of another attack like Southport.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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