The heartbroken mother of one of the children killed in the Southport attack has told an inquiry: “We lost everything that day. And I need to understand how this happened.”
Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed when Axel Rudakubana carried out the stabbings at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July last year.
The girls’ parents are on Monday giving impact evidence to the Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall, where Elsie’s mother Jenni Stancombe said: “We are one of three families that paid the ultimate price for that day.”
With her husband David by her side, Mrs Stancombe recalled the day of the stabbing, when she received a phone call to say the girls in the dance class had been attacked.
The couple rushed to the scene and looked for their daughter among the injured children outside, until they were told a girl matching her description was still inside and “hadn’t made it”.
“We are one of three families that paid the ultimate price for that day,” Mrs Stancombe said. “But the truth is, what happened wasn’t just a case of ‘knife crime’. The issue runs much deeper than the weapon that was used.
“It’s about the root causes, the drive, the intent, and the series of failures that allowed it to happen.”
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She continued: “We lost everything that day. And I need to understand how this happened.”
Chief North of England correspondent
It is in the small, everyday details that the loss of their daughters tears at anyone’s heart.
The teddy bear, which, when they squeeze its foot, plays a voice message recorded by Alice. The bear in the bed where once she scrambled to join them.
The younger sister who asks her parents if she can visit Elsie in heaven because she doesn’t want her to be alone there.
The empty bed in an empty room.
The girl called Bebe, who would grab her mum’s porridge in the morning and eat it with the “cheekiest grin”.
The grief, the pain and the never-ending sense of loss were palpable in every moment of the statements read to the Southport inquiry.
The questions, too – why their child, why did it happen, why wasn’t he stopped?
The parents of Bebe, Elsie and Alice will be forever united by the unimaginable public loss of their children and their lawyers say the inquiry process is a re-traumatising one.
But the goal of learning lessons and making sure it can never happen again is worth it, before they can move on to the next stage of their grieving, in honour of their daughters.
If anything can do that, it is the power of Lauren King’s final words.
“Her name was Bebe. She was just six years old. And she deserved so much more.”
‘No therapy can resolve what happened’
Lauren King, the mother of six-year-old Bebe, said the loss of her daughter has left her “broken beyond repair”.
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She told the inquiry: “On that day, being told over the phone by my husband that a man had gone into the dance class with a knife and that they couldn’t find Bebe… the hours walking around in the intense heat, not knowing whether she was alive or not… praying to God that she was.
“Then, being told in public, on a street corner, that my child was dead. These are moments no form of therapy can ever resolve.”
Ms King said, if she had to describe her daughter in three words, “they would be joyful, hilarious, and magical – but even that barely scratches the surface”.
Bebe, she said, was “unbelievable. I know it’s easy for a parent to say that, but I have truly never known a child like her.
“She had this spark, this glow. I’d look at her and think, I can’t believe you’re my daughter. I can’t believe I made you.”
Read more:
Southport teacher’s ‘crushing guilt’
Victims remembered a year on
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Alexandra Aguiar, the mother of nine-year-old Alice, told the inquiry her daughter had been “a little shy” when they arrived at the class and initially “asked me to stay with her”.
“As Alice’s mum, I really wish that I had stayed that day. I relive this moment in my mind constantly,” she said. “The guilt of taking her there and leaving her there is unimaginable.”
