Southport killer’s headteacher says ‘sinister’ pupil was ‘constructing as much as one thing’

As the inquiry into the Southport stabbings continue, the headteacher of the school Axel Rudakubana attended said that she had seen him acting suspiciously several times

The headteacher of Axel Rudakubana’s school has described him as a “sinister” pupil. It comes as she revealed Axel was incredibly “unpredictable” and “unusual”.

An inquiry into the Southport stabbings is continuing in Liverpool one year on from the horrific attack. Axel, now aged 19, is serving a whole-life term for carrying out the knife attack that killed Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King.

The public inquiry looking into how the incident came about has been hearing evidence of how much of a risk Axel was to the public. Now, Axel’s headteacher Joanne Hodson has given her own testimony as to how the teenage killer became so violent.

Speaking at the inquiry, the Daily Mail reported that from the moment that Axel was registered as a student at The Acorns School in Ormskirk, Lancashire, he was determined to be at “very high risk”. He had enrolled in the school at the age of 13 after he was expelled from his previous school for carrying a knife into school with him.

When asked about the first time she met Axel, she described the meeting as “memorable” as he chillingly explained why he had brought the knife into class. “He looked me in the eyes and said ‘to use it’,” she recalled.

“This is the only time in my career that a pupil has said this to me or behaved in a manner so devoid of any remorse,” Joanne added. She added that his parents — who were also at the meeting — “didn’t flinch” when Axel came out with the horrific statement, adding they thought their child was a “good boy”.

Joanne went on to say that Axel’s family believed his bad behaviour in school was as a result of him being bullied in the past, meaning it was “someone else’s fault”. However, the meeting left the headteacher so spooked that she went on to email every teacher to search Axel for knives regularly due to showing no emotion or remorse.

She described Axel as a “highly unusual pupil”, one that had left a mark on her throughout the course of her career. She said that he was a hard pupil to read and was particularly jitterish.

“There was a sinister undertone, and it was difficult to build rapport,” she said. “He had no respect for authority and generally a lack of respect of other pupils and staff; he was insistent that his views alone were correct and everyone else was wrong.

“There was never any sense of remorse or accountability for his actions,” Joanne added. “Those features are, in my view, extraordinary.”

The inquiry also heard that within weeks of his arrival in October of 2019, the headteacher had noticed a change in his behaviour, with searches of school shootings being seen in his internet history. He also was threatening pupils and staff, and had made bold and outlandish statements in class.

Joanne went on to say: “It felt like he was building up to something. I felt like something was going to happen…this kind of level of agitation and the direct challenges to staff and the direct the way he was with the other pupils, it felt like every day it was building and building and building.”

Axel would go on to attack a pupil who was at his former school before he began to plan another incident — the Southport stabbings. The inquiry continues.

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