Parents have revealed how their seven-year-old daughter, who survived more than 33 stab wounds, crouched over to shield her friends as children were caught in a “stampede” trying to escape the Southport knife attack.
The brave girl has told her mother, “I’m glad I could help them” as she relived details of the traumatic day last July, a public inquiry into the tragedy heard.
She and other survivors have been left struggling with panic attacks and flashbacks as they try to rebuild their lives after Axel Rudakubana, then 17, launched a rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday dance class.
The attack claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and left eight more girls and two adults wounded.
The killer, who will simply be referred to as “the perpetrator” or “AR” in hearings out of respect to victims and their families, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 52 years.
The mother of the survivor, who cannot be named and is known only as C1, told the second day of the public inquiry into the atrocity how her daughter desperately tried to help her friends.
She shielded them at the top of the stairs before helping them to escape the Hart Space studio, only to be pulled back inside by the knifeman, who rained down yet more blows which felt like punches.
In a powerful statement read to the hearing at Liverpool Town Hall, she said her daughter recalls the class rushing out of a narrow doorway and downstairs, following their wounded teacher, Leanne Lucas.
“She describes it as a stampede,” she said. “In the chaos, she was knocked over and found herself trapped and huddled with two other children at the top of the stairs.
“She talks quietly of how she put her arms around the girls as he began to attack them. She tells me with such clarity that a moment came were one of the girls was able to get up, she put the girl's hand on the handrail and told her to go – to get down the stairs – and she did.
“The attack continued, she was still holding another girl, ‘I crouched over the top of her,’ she says. ‘I told her it would be okay,’ She recalls this with such purpose and determination, like it was her responsibility.
“‘It happened so fast, but I helped them, I'm glad I could help them, Mum,’ she tells me.”
Harrowing CCTV, seen by the parents during the attacker’s court hearing, showed how she managed to make it to the exit – only to be pulled back inside by the knifeman.
“Somehow, she emerges from the building – and we see her, for a brief moment on CCTV,” she continued. “Escaping. Finding help. Showing so much strength. But her arm is badly injured, and it’s trailing behind, and he grabs it.
“In a flash of struggle, she’s gone again. For 11 seconds, she is out of sight. And then there she is again. She has stood up after enduring another attack of more than 20 stab wounds to her back and shoulders.
“She stumbles outside to the windows, reaching for help. She eventually falls and, soon after, is carried to safety.”
The girl lost her entire blood volume and had to learn to sit, stand and walk again as she recovered from a total of 33 stab wounds, the mother said.
The mother told the hearing that her daughter “may be a survivor of this attack, but she is still trying to survive this, every single day”.
She struggles with panic attacks, which make her daily life “difficult and exhausting” and “needs an enormous amount of support and scaffolding to do normal things”.
“In the shops we have to avoid the news section for fear of his face, or other images being on the front pages again,” she said, adding that they had removed knives from their home and replaced them with blunt-tipped ones.
She called for the inquiry to answer her daughter’s questions over how anyone could carry out such an attack and why he was not stopped.
“She deserves an apology ... our girls deserve an apology,” she added. “Backed up by the promise that changes will be made, and this will not be allowed to happen again.”
She told the inquiry her daughter “fought like hell, to get herself out of that building, twice”.
She said: “I would like to say that I don't for a moment doubt that the actions of the teachers there that day saved lives. They escaped to call the police and flag down help, they shielded other children. I am grateful for what they did for those girls.
“But the uncomfortable and often unspoken truth of our own reality is that, when the adults left in those first moments, our daughter had to save herself.”
Another parent, whose daughter survived three stab wounds, said it was “patently clear that lessons need to be learned from what happened, and processes need to be changed”.
Sitting beside the girl’s mother in the witness box, he said: “Our nine-year-old daughter was stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see.
“Although she didn’t know what was happening – she knew she had to run.”
He said they had since seen CCTV footage of her running from the building looking “scared, confused and pained” and hiding behind a parked car, before jumping to “relative safety” through an open car door.
He added: “We remain eternally grateful that we were lucky that day, and that the skill of the paramedics, surgeons and medical staff meant we got our little girl back.”
Describing his daughter as his “hero”, the father said she remained “the positive, caring, funny, enthusiastic, courageous girl she always was”.
He added: “She wears her scars with a dignity and defiance that is remarkable.”
The mother of another girl who was at the event, referred to as Child Q, said arriving to collect her daughter to find screaming children fleeing from the building was “the most horrific experience of my life”.
In a statement read by the family’s legal representative, she said her daughter was “an anxious little girl” who had taken a “significant step” by attending the dance class, as she often struggled socially outside school.
The girl’s mother said: “Although physically unharmed, she has struggled with the psychological impact of the trauma and to this day has been unable to talk to us about what happened and what she witnessed.
“Our daughter became very withdrawn, emotional and had so many worries. In her words, due to what she witnessed, ‘How will I ever be normal again?’
“She is even more anxious about not being with us or being dropped off at another event without us. She is scared when she hears a siren or sees an emergency vehicle. Q is still unable to sleep alone and struggles with falling asleep.
“She always asks for doors to be closed when we enter or leave a room; this helps her to feel safe.”
Opening the inquiry on Tuesday, chair Sir Adrian Fulford described the 29 July attack as “one of the most egregious crimes” in UK history.
