This is the moment Kate shared a touching embrace with hero yoga teacher Leanne Lucas in the aftermath of the Southport attack. Ms Lucas was running a Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year when killer Axel Rudakubana entered the building and began stabbing children and adults. The attack claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and left Ms Lucas seriously injured.
The 36-year-old shared photos on Facebook showing the moment Kate and William embraced her on a visit to Southport in the aftermath of the attack in October. In a 'My 2024 memories' reel, she also shared photos of her meeting Taylor Swift backstage at a concert in Toronto. The royals made a surprise visit to Merseyside in October to privately meet with the families of the victims, where they heard of their anguish and from emergency services personnel who responded to the attack.
It comes after Ms Lucas gave moving testimony to Liverpool Crown Court at the sentencing of Rudakubana last month, telling the court the attack had shattered her trust in society. She told the hearing: “On that day, I received several injuries that have not only affected me physically but also mentally. I, as do the girls, have scars we cannot unsee, scars we cannot move on from.”. She added that she had previously worked with teenagers and had “never would have considered that they would hurt me or hurt younger children".
"To discover that he [Rudakubana] had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible," she said. The 18-year-old was handed 13 life sentences for the “evil” knife attack, which also left eight other children injured, as well as businessman John Hayes, who tried to intervene to stop the attack. He was ordered to serve a minimum of 52 years for the killings, but could not be sentenced to a whole-life term as he was aged seventeen when he carried out the killings.
