Axel Rudakubana: from ‘unassuming’ schoolboy to Southport killer
Axel Rudakubana: from ‘unassuming’ schoolboy to Southport killer
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How a chain of events apparently beginning at school five years ago led to the murder of three girls in horrific atrocity. When Axel Rudakubana returned to school after the summer holidays five years ago, something had changed. He had turned 13 weeks earlier but this was not the usual difficult transition to teenage life.
![[Josh Halliday]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/02/17/Josh_Halliday.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“In year 7 and year 8 he was fairly unassuming. Nothing that would be red flags,” said a source close to Range high school in the seaside town of Formby, Merseyside. “What happened that summer is the question.”. Within a month of the new term, he complained of being racially bullied. Fellow pupils said he started “acting up” in class, remonstrating with teachers and sometimes storming out. “Doing an Axel,” as it became known.
![[Mugshot of Rudakubana]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/22095bccf254290d2522a9253d0acb34f99a0fd8/0_230_3150_3938/master/3150.jpg?width=120&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
In October 2019, the 13-year-old made an anonymous phone call to the NSPCC’s Childline, admitting to having murderous thoughts about the bully. He said he had taken a kitchen knife to school on 10 occasions and asked: “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?”.
The disturbing call was, his barrister Stan Reiz KC said, a “plea for help”. It triggered a chain of events that would culminate nearly five years later in one of the most shocking atrocities in recent UK history. It is a story that can be told in full for the first time after Rudakubana, now 18, was sentenced on Thursday to a minimum of 52 years in prison, the longest for anyone his age.
