I came face to face with Southport killer Axel Rudakubana in dance studio during massacre – and carried victims out
A HERO of the Southport knife attacks has told for the first time how he confronted killer Axel Rudakubana — and said of that fateful day: “The horror will live with me forever.”
Joel Verite, 26, was among the first on the scene as the teenage fiend ran amok last year – leaving three young girls dead and stabbing eight more.
Dad-of-two Joel was just six feet away from Rudakubana, who was wielding a 20cm-long knife at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.
He still refuses to say the name of the killer, jailed for a minimum of 52 years last month.
Personal trainer Joel recalled: “He’s looked at me. He had his hood up and a big kitchen knife. I just don’t understand how anyone can do anything like that to innocent girls. He definitely doesn’t deserve to be alive.”
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar died in the horror which shocked the nation on July 29 last year.
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Joel told how he had been taking a well-earned break on that boiling hot day, helping pal Marcin Tyjon with his window-cleaning business.
He said: “It was a normal day apart from the fact it was roasting. We’d stopped off to get a coffee and a chat and were joking and kept saying, ‘Another five minutes’ before we get back to work.
“Then we set off for our next customer and were driving down the road. We had the music on and the windows down.”
Meanwhile, Rudakubana — armed with a £1.70 kitchen knife bought on Amazon — was in the Hart Space community centre, where 26 children aged between six and 11 had been enjoying a two-hour play and dance session.
CCTV footage showed some fleeing the studio with yoga teacher Leanne Lucas, who organised the session with pal Heidi Liddle.
Marcin - who Joel calls Martin - suddenly noticed a “commotion”, with Leanne slumped against a car.
Joel said: “I jumped out of the van and went up to her. She just shouted, ‘He’s stabbing kids in there’.
"She pointed towards where the studio was. I didn’t understand what was going on but I saw a big wound on her shoulder and realised something serious was happening.
"She was on the phone to the police. She stood up and pointed to where it was and then collapsed on the floor.
“I picked up her phone and said to the police, ‘This woman has been hurt and you need to get here as fast as you can’.”
As Joel ran towards the studio, a woman in a car furiously honked the horn.
He said: “I went over and she had four or five girls in the car. She’s got her daughter there next to her in the passenger seat.
“There’s four or five girls in the back seat. We didn’t really have a clue what was going on.
“She just said to me, ‘Can you please get this girl out?’ I look at this poor girl and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve picked her up out of the car and I’m running and I’m shouting and screaming for help.”
As more people began to gather, Marcin started performing CPR on the girl, who Joel later found out was Alice, one of the deceased.
Joel, who took his T-shirt off to help stem the blood, said: “It was just something you literally see in a horror film.
"People were coming to see what was going on and when they realised children were hurt they got involved straight away.”
Now in just his shorts and work boots, Joel then went into the studio as he feared that “this awful thing is still going on”.
We could see the horror in their faces, knowing that, obviously, something could have happened to their child
Joel Verite
He said: “There was blood everywhere on the staircase. I’ve got halfway up the staircase and I’m shouting, ‘Hello, hello’. I couldn’t hear any noise.
"I looked up and literally he’s come and circled round and looked at me.
"He’s on the top of the landing, looking at me on the staircase, and he’s scurried back off into the room. He had his hood up and a big kitchen knife.
“I’m literally kind of frozen and I’m standing on the stairs and was like, ‘What the f*** do I do?’.
“It’s easy for people to think, ‘I would have done this and that’ when you watch films. But I’ll tell you now, until you’re in that situation, you think very differently.
“Especially with having my two young ones as well. I might not be here today if I did actually do what I probably really wanted to do.”
Joel went on: “What I witnessed was like a scene from a disaster movie. The horror will live with me forever.”
Joel, a former Wigan Warriors rugby league academy player, used a bin to smash the glass door to ensure Rudakubana could not lock the building shut.
He sensibly retreated before returning with garage mechanics armed with makeshift weapons.
Footage shown at Rudakubana’s sentencing captured the moment Joel and three others walked towards the door.
As they did, a police patrol car arrived and Sgt Greg Gillespie - the first officer on the scene - jumped out.
Joel told him what was happening but as the officer was only armed with a baton, they had to briefly wait for one with a Taser.
Joel said: “About 40 seconds after Greg turns up, this other cop pulls up and he gets out of his car, comes straight past me and Greg, he goes upstairs straight away, Greg behind him, then I’m behind Greg, straight up the stairs, and then they tackled that piece of s***.”
As they did so, Joel scooped up another young girl, who he later learned was Bebe.
He recalled: “There’s a young girl on the floor and I pick her up, and I’m running as fast as I can towards the road, shouting for help.
"Thank God by this stage there’s paramedics there, ambulance service there, the fire service is there. A paramedic comes over straight away and starts to help.”
Parents recall a day of horrors
THE parents of two of the Southport victims have told of first hearing about the attack — with one racing through red lights to get to the scene.
Jenni Stancombe, 35, mother of seven-year-old Elsie, said she got a call from another mum who told her: “Something awful’s happened. Somebody’s stabbed the kids.”
She said: “I just ran to the car. I left the whole house open. It’s a five-minute drive from ours.
“We kept our hands on the horn, going faster and faster, jumping every red light on the road.
“I just didn’t care. I kept whacking the horn.
“We got there, left the car in the middle of the road and ran.”
Elsie’s dad David, 36, added: “You knew when you got there how bad it was. No one should ever have to witness what we saw that day.”
Bebe King’s parents — who cannot be named for legal reasons — were preparing for a family wedding when they dropped the six-year-old off in a “beautiful pink outfit” at the dance workshop.
When Bebe’s dad went to pick her up two hours later, he saw ambulances “all over the place”.
He told The Sunday Times: “I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ and someone said, ‘There’s somebody stabbing kids’.”
The 43-year-old rang his wife and told her: “You need to get here.”
Bebe’s mother, 41, was about to pay in an M&S when he called and told her: “I can’t believe I’m telling you this but somebody has gone into the class with a knife.”
Bebe’s dad remembered a female police officer approaching him.
He said: “We had given people Bebe’s description.
“When she came towards me, I went cold.
“She said, ‘Are you Bebe’s dad?’. As soon as I said yes, she told me Bebe had passed away.”
Joel then ran back to the studio for a third time but armed officers told him to help with first-aid.
He said: “I stayed with this one girl the whole time, and Martin stayed with another girl the whole time.
"I just had to relay information from one paramedic to the ambulance, grabbing drip bags, grabbing whatever they needed, just kept on running back and forth.
“As time went on, I vividly remember Martin and I are just both stood up, holding these drip bags above our head, just looking at each other and crying.
"We were like, ‘What has happened?’. It must have been 20 minutes since we were in the van having a good day.”
He doesn’t deserve any breath out of my body, he doesn’t even deserve a name, which is why I’m not saying it. But he definitely doesn’t deserve to be alive
Meanwhile, distressed parents arrived, frantically looking for their children.
Joel said: “All these parents would have been getting ready to come pick the daughters up from this dance class, and turn up to all that.
"We could see the horror in their faces, knowing that, obviously, something could have happened to their child.”
Another haunting image which remains with Joel is a paramedic acting as triage to decide which child needed the most urgent care.
Eventually enough medics arrived and Joel could go home, and the first thing he did was hug daughter Avani, then nine months.
He said: “It was hard seeing her because, while it was nice, I was also thinking, ‘Someone’s just lost theirs’.”
A few hours later, Sgt Gillespie got in touch. Joel said: “He rang and said, ‘Thank you’ because I was there to support him.
"I appreciated that. He was like, ‘You came up with us, literally in your shorts and no top, and work boots’.”
I still feel like I’m trying to process it all now. I didn’t get hurt, but further down the line it catches up on you
Joel Verite
Joel, whose second daughter Mabel was born just three weeks ago, later provided a video interview as evidence.
Seven months on, he is seeing a trauma therapist, and says Victim Support “has been amazing to me”.
Joel, who now hopes to join the RAF as a personal trainer, said: “I still feel like I’m trying to process it all now. I didn’t get hurt, but further down the line it catches up on you.
"I will say to anyone who is struggling with any kind of trauma in your life, it would definitely be worthwhile speaking to someone and addressing those problems.”
Joel admitted that he avoids looking at pictures of Bebe, Elsie and Alice as he finds it too traumatic.
He plans to contact some of the families when the time is right. He said: “I’ve spoken with a few since it’s happened.
They were very, very hard conversations. There’s still people I want to speak to who were there on that day with me. I just haven’t had the chance to.
“All the families of the children involved in the attack are really inspiring. Getting through each day is an accomplishment.”
Joel welcomed the 52-year minimum term handed to Rudakubana, 18, at Liverpool crown court last month after he admitted three murders, ten attempted murders, possession of a knife, deadly toxin and a terrorist document.
But he would have preferred him to have faced the death penalty.
He said: “He doesn’t deserve any breath out of my body, he doesn’t even deserve a name, which is why I’m not saying it. But he definitely doesn’t deserve to be alive.”
Joel spoke to The Sun on Sunday after the Government published a bombshell report that confirmed Rudakubana should have been regarded as a potential terrorist.
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A public inquiry has been launched by the Home Secretary.
- VICTIM Support’s National Homicide Service assists those bereaved by murder and manslaughter, as well as witnesses. Visit www.victimsupport.org.uk
Timeline of events related to the Southport stabbings
AXEL Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, and 10 counts of attempted murder.
Here is a timeline of events relating to the case:
2002: Rudakubana's father Alphonse moves to the UK from Rwanda, according to an interview he gave to his local newspaper in Southport in 2015.
August 7, 2006: Rudakubana is born in Cardiff, Wales.
2013: The family - including Rudakubana's father, mother and older brother - move from Wales to Banks in Lancashire, a few miles from Southport.
July 29, 2024: Shortly before midday, a knifeman enters a dance class at The Hart Space in Hart Street in Southport.
Bebe, Elsie and Alice are fatally wounded. Eight other children are injured, as are instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
Police say they have detained a male and seized a knife.
Within hours, claims spread online that the suspect is an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat in 2023.
Some claims include an alleged identity.
July 30, 2024: In the evening, a peaceful vigil is held outside Southport's Atkinson arts venue, where flowers are laid in memory of those who died.
Shortly after the vigil, a separate protest begins outside the town's mosque in St Luke's Road.
People throw items towards the mosque, property is damaged and police vehicles are set on fire.
July 31, 2024: Demonstrators gather in Whitehall, London, for an "Enough Is Enough" protest.
Flares and cans are thrown at police and more than 100 people are arrested.
Disorder also breaks out in Hartlepool, County Durham, and Aldershot, Hampshire.
August 1, 2024: Police announce that Rudakubana has been charged with the murders of Bebe, Elsie Dot and Alice, 10 counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article.
He is not named by police because of his age.
He appears in court in Liverpool and Honorary Recorder of Liverpool Andrew Menary KC rules he can be named, as he is due to turn 18 in a week.
He initially smiled on entering the courtroom - then kept his face covered by his sweatshirt for the remainder of the proceedings before the case was adjourned.
Later that evening, demonstrators gather outside a hotel in Newton Heath, Manchester.
August 2, 2024: Three police officers are taken to hospital after disorder in Sunderland.
August 3, 2024: There are scenes of violence during planned protests across the UK, including in Liverpool, Hull, Nottingham and Belfast.
August 4, 2024: Disorder continues, including outside a Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where masked demonstrators launch lengths of wood and sprayed fire extinguishers at police officers.
August 5, 2024: The Government holds an emergency Cobra meeting in the wake of the disorder and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vows to "ramp up criminal justice".
That evening, a peaceful vigil is held in Southport, a week on from the killings. Police deal with disorder in Plymouth, Devon and Darlington, County Durham.
August 7, 2024: Prison sentences for those involved in the unrest begin to be handed out. Derek Drummond, 58, is the first person to be jailed for violent disorder at Liverpool Crown Court, where he is sentenced to three years.
More than 100 protests are planned for across the country, with counter-demonstrations taking place, but the majority of police forces report very little trouble.
October 29, 2024: Merseyside Police announces Rudakubana will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court via videolink the next day charged with production of a biological toxin, Ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
October 30, 2024: Rudakubana appears at Westminster Magistrates' Court via videolink from HMP Belmarsh to face the two new charges.
He holds his sweater over the bottom half of his face and does not respond when asked to confirm his name.
November 13, 2024: Rudakubana appears at Liverpool Crown Court via videolink. He covers his face with his grey sweatshirt and does not speak throughout the hearing.
About 20 family members of victims sit in the public gallery. The case is adjourned until December 12, when a preparatory hearing will take place.
January 20, 2025: Rudakubana appears at Liverpool Crown Court for the first day of his trial where he pleads guilty to all 16 charges, including the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.