Brother says Southport killer may have wanted to hurt society

The brother of a Southport killer has told the public inquiry into a dance class stabbing that he believes his brother may have targeted children because it would cause “particularly serious harm to society”.

Axel Rudakubana, then 17, murdered three children at a Taylor Swift-themed event in the Merseyside city on 29 July 2024.

Dion Rudakubana, 21, gave evidence via videolink from a secure location on the second day of the inquest, sitting in Liverpool Town Hall.

Asked about his brother’s motivation for the attack, he said: “Children are very valuable to society because they are the future of society. It’s just an idea I’ve had in the past.”

He told the interrogation that he was upstairs on the morning of the attack when he saw his brother leaving the house wearing a mask.

Dion said she couldn’t believe her brother had left home since March 2022, when he was arrested with a knife on a bus.

He told the inquest that he was “a little nervous at first”.

Inquiry counsel Richard Boyle asked: “Your concern was that he was not going for a walk, but would be out to carry out an attack?”

Dion replied: “Initially, potentially, yes.”

He said he became less worried as his parents became convinced that his brother had simply gone for a walk.

He said that shortly afterwards his mother showed him the packaging of the knife, which she said had been found in the washing machine.

In a statement, Dion said there was no discussion about contacting the police at that time.

He said, “I did not believe he intended to harm anyone and I thought if he was carrying a knife it was to protect himself, not to harm others.”

Asked whether he should have contacted police about his fears, he said: “It wasn’t enough for me to do that.”

Dion told the inquest that he returned home from university on July 26 last year and his father told him his brother had done “something bad”.

He said he did not remember when his father explained to him that he had stopped his brother while attempting to take a taxi to his former school, Range High School, on July 22.

“The reason he gave any information about this was because he was asking me to be careful around him,” he said.

In a message sent to a friend in question on July 27, Dion described what her father had told her, writing: “Your brother is dangerous. He could kill you.”

“I don’t think he directly said ‘he can kill you’ but he hinted that there was a threat to life and I felt that way,” he said.

In a statement given to the inquiry, Dion also said she was “devastated and deeply saddened by the extreme pain, suffering and grief that my brother has caused me”.

The inquiry later asked the killer’s father, Alphonse Rudakubana, what information he had shared with various agencies about his son’s “destructive” behavior at home.

Investigation revealed that on several occasions Rudakubana had threatened to kill his father in a fit of anger.

Inquiry lawyer Nicholas Moss Casey read out a statement given by Mr Rudakubana to the inquiry, describing how his son’s “attitude and behavior at home can be very scary”.

Around this time, his father recalled how his son had “poured a considerable amount of oil” on his head and threatened to kill him “in very threatening words”.

Mr Moss asked what he meant by the dangerous words.

Mr Rudakubana said his son was already in some kind of “mental anguish”.

He said: “He came in front of me, he was stabbing me in the chest and saying if you get me out of here, in this house, it may take a week, it may take a month, it may take years, but trust me I will kill you.”

She said the reference to leaving home was a comment she made about a week earlier when she suggested her son would have to live in a different home in the future.

Mr Moss read a statement from Mr Rudakubana, who said he and his wife were “very scared” of their son.

Mr Rudukabana also said the family “felt isolated” after settling in Britain following the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s.

He said: “We decided to wait until they were older and understood and less affected. I was surprised – they came home and were talking about the genocide in Rwanda, they were learning about it at school.

“Then we told them some things we thought they could handle.”

He said he did not believe the discussion would affect his family life in Britain.

“I think what made an impact on them was that we were a small family with two friends from Rwanda [in the UK],” He said.

“They could see that we were a little lonely compared to their peers, their school friends. So they would see that we were in a foreign land, even though they thought they were born here.”