The father of the Southport killer has told the public inquiry he regrets not calling the police after he accepted a delivery of a machete his son had ordered.
Alphonse Rudakubana, giving evidence to the Southport Inquiry for a second day at Liverpool Town Hall on Thursday, said he had hidden the knife from Axel Rudakubana but did not ask his son any questions about it.
Axel Rudakubana, then 17, murdered Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.
The inquiry has heard a machete ordered by the teenager, using a false name, was delivered to his father at their home in Old School Close, Banks, Lancashire, in June 2023.
Mr Rudakubana, speaking over a videolink from a remote location and unseen by anyone except the inquiry team, said: “That’s an instance I regret so much. I should have called the police.”
He added: “I regret that I didn’t tell the police because if I had what happened on July 29 wouldn’t have happened. They would have come and checked everything.”
In his statement, Mr Rudakubana said the package was heavy, in the shape of a knife and the delivery driver told him it was a knife.
Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquest, said: “You didn’t ask AR anything about it at any time? ”
He said: “No, it would have quickly escalated. I was scared by then.
“I thought it was a knife. I made a decision not to give it to him.”
In his statement, he said: “AR overheard my conversation with the delivery driver and following delivery he asked for the package.
“I refused and expected there to be an outburst but unusually he accepted being told no.”
Asked why he didn’t open it, Mr Rudakubana said: “It wasn’t my property and that would have created a dangerous reaction from him.”
He said he could not say if it was he or his son who accepted delivery of a second machete, in October 2023.
Mr Rudakubana said if it was him, he would have placed the parcel, which the inquiry heard came with age restriction labels, behind the front door and could not remember if Rudakubana took it away.
Asked if he should have called the police after the second delivery, Mr Rudakubana said: “If I knew there was a machete, it was a knife, I would have, yeah, I would accept it, but I didn’t.”
Mr Rudakubana said he knew his son had ordered seeds, which he was later discovered to have used to create deadly poison ricin, but said he had overheard him talking with his mother about an interest in gardening.
He accepted he had never seen Rudakubana doing any gardening.
Asked if he should have been more curious about the deliveries, the father said: “I was a traumatised person. It wasn’t normal at all.”
He told the inquiry Rudakubana made some money from a genealogy business he had between 2020 and 2022 but after that his source of money was his parents.
He said: “If he wanted money, we would give him money.”
Rudakubana’s mother Laetitia Muzayire is due to give evidence later on Thursday.
