Most of those living in the same village of Axel Rudakubana had no idea of his existence but for next door neighbour Caroline, she remembers the way he’d stare
A former neighbour of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has revealed what living next door to the teenager was really like before his harrowing mass murder.
On Thursday, the 18-year-old monster was told he will serve life with a minimum 52 year-term for murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport last July.
Caroline who left the area following the tragic July 29 horror, recalled “weird” Rudakubana’s chilling stare but admitted she considered him to be a “normal, moody teenager”.
She said: “To us, it was just a family living next door who kept themselves to themselves, I thought the teenage son was a bit weird, like he just stared at you and didn’t really say anything at all.
“I just put that down to him being a teenager but he did used to stare. He’d stare at me like he was staring right through me. I just thought he was a normal, moody teenager. The family themselves seemed normal, the mum used to always forget to put the handbrake on and I would knock on and say ‘your car’s rolled down again, you need to move it’ and she would say ‘no, no, I’ll get my husband to do it’.
“[The dad] would enter into a bit more conversation but it was just general chit chat. We had no problems living next to them, it was just a family getting on and kept themselves to themselves.”
The teenager’s family remain in hiding, being forced to leave the village following the disturbing crimes committed by Rudakubana. But other than Caroline next door, the community had no idea who the family were.
Annie Ives, who has been a trustee at The Hub in Southport since 2021, said: “One thing that has also been apparent is that the family were just unknown, which is very unusual because apparently they’ve lived here for seven years.
“Nobody knows anything about them and I have friends who live across from the close and they’ve never even seen them. It’s very unusual.”
Local councillor Thomas de Freitas was completely unaware of Rudakubana and his family’s existence in the village of Banks.
He said: “It’s so strange, no one around the village really saw them or knew them. No one I have spoken to knew the family. Some people told me they saw the family around now and then but no one has said they knew them, it’s odd.”
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