Teenager accused of Southport murders ‘rarely left the family home’
The teenager accused of the multiple stabbing of children in Southport rarely left the family home, and is a mystery to locals.
“I’ve lived here 20 years – I’ve never, ever seen him,” one said today near the family home of Axel Rudakubana in Banks, a quiet village, three miles outside the seaside town.
The family – father, mother and his elder brother – moved to Banks from Cardiff around a decade ago.
Neighbours there describe a “lovely couple” with a hardworking father and stay-at-home mother to “two boisterous boys”.
Rudakubana’s father is originally from Rwanda, a country that suffered a deadly genocide in the early 1990s, and moved to the UK in 2002, he told his local newspaper in Southport.
Karate classes
The suspect would accompany his father to karate classes as a child in Wales, sensei Chico Mbakwe, an instructor in Cardiff, said.
He told the PA news agency: “He would come and do grading and his father would take him home. I can’t even really remember the boy but can vaguely remember the dad.
“The last time I saw the father he was taking part in his grading, he wasn’t my student, he was somebody else’s.
“I told him you can carry on, but even if you have a brainstorm and turn it on now I would still fail you.”
Despite the discouraging start, Rudakubana’s father pursued his interest in martial arts in the north of England.
A profile of Aphonse Rudakubana in his local paper, The Southport Visiter, said he moved to the area in 2013 and trained with local clubs.
The family lived in mid-terrace three-bed house on a newly built cul-de-sac of a dozen or so houses.
Digital footprint
During the accused’s first appearance at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday, after being charged with three murders and 10 attempted murders, he initially smiled on entering the courtroom – then kept his face covered by his sweatshirt for the remainder of proceedings.
Unusually, the youngster appears to have no digital footprint online.
A local source in Banks said the alleged killer did not mix with others, though the family are unremarkable and there had been no sign of anything wrong.
“Nobody knows them. It’s only the father who went to work who I’ve ever seen,” a near neighbour of the family said.
She added: “You can’t believe anything would happen like this in this sort of place.”
Locals said they have not seen the family since police arrived at the house shortly after the attack in Southport.
A police cordon remains around the property.
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Sadly it looks like severe mental health issues, probably schizophrenia, was the catalyst for the murder of those three children and attempted murder of those injured in the stabbing. Also, it’s been revealed Axel Muganwa Rudakubana was travelling in a taxi when he refused to pay his fare and the driver told him to get out. Baring in mind he was carrying a weapon the driver effectively dodged a bullet. And the very place he exited the taxi just happened to lead to the dance school involved in the tragedy. And it now seems this horrendous act was not preplanned… Read more »
We really shouldn’t be speculating on what may have happened! The law needs to take its course, any speculation could influence a jury.
. It says he s been diagnosed with autism .
Not schizophrenia.
So the sum total of this news item is that there’s no immediately obvious explanation for what this lad did, and in consequence none of us are any the wiser. Y Cymro‘s speculation sounds plausible, but in the end speculation at this stage is all that it can be. A couple of things are at least sure, though: first that, despite the morose suspicions of the thick neanderthals in the Tommy Robinson brigade, it’s clear enough that this family didn’t arrive here recently on a rubber boat. And, second, that they’re not Muslims, given that no Muslims would give their… Read more »
I wish people would not speculate on the motive or how it actually happened as this will certainly have an inquest plus maybe a jury trial if he pleads not guilty.