A police sergeant hesitated for just six seconds before entering the Southport crime scene, armed only with a baton, to face the attacker, according to an inquiry today.
Sgt Greg Gillespie was cautioned by a passerby aiding the children, saying, ‘You need a f***** gun mate, that’s doing nothing’ before he proceeded inside.
The officer took ten minutes to arrive at the Hart Space dance studio after receiving reports of ‘a boy with a knife who had stabbed multiple people and numerous casualties were present’.
Victims Alice Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Stancombe, seven, were fatally injured at the Taylor Swift-themed lesson on July 29 last year by Axel Rudakubana, who received a minimum 52-year prison sentence.
During the inquiry into the incident, it was revealed that Sgt Gillespie outpaced a fast response paramedic and arrived at the scene by 11:56 am after being instructed to respond.
He parked on Hart Street, where footage from his body camera captured parents stopping him for information, uncertain if their children had been safely evacuated.
Det Chief Inspector Jason Pye, the senior investigating officer, told the inquiry: ‘He gets out of his car.
‘He notices a child to the left hand side.
Police and forensic teams on Hart Street, Southport following the stabbing last summer
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were all murdered in the atrocity on July 29, 2024
(Left to right) PC Luke Holden, PCSO Tim Parry and Sgt Greg Gillespie, who all faced down Southport knife attacker Axel Rudakubana during his killing spree and were later honoured for their bravery
‘He assumes that that child is not breathing because the two members of the public are standing over her.
‘He notified them that was a fast paramedic behind, and he told them to wave down the first paramedic.’
Window cleaner Joel Verite had carried the child, referred to as C1, from outside the building after she was dragged back into the centre by Rudakubana, then 17.
He used his t-shirt to stem her bleeding and she survived the attack.
Mr Verite asked the police officer to follow him through to the car park.
They stopped at the entrance to the Hart Space while Sgt Gillespie updated his control room on the radio, saying: ‘We are going in to detain him.’
‘He goes to take his baton out and his protective equipment and Joel stops him,’ DCI Pye told the inquiry.
‘At that point Sgt Gillespie says, “Why? What has he got?”
Axel Rudakubana outside the Hart Space dance studio, in Southport, before he launched his attack which killed three young girls
A knife identical to the one used in the attack carried out by Rudakubana at The Hart Space, in Southport, last July
‘And that’s the first time he says he’s got a knife.
‘He’s warned by Joel not to go in because he’s got the knife and he would need more than a baton.’
The inquiry heard the exact words were: ‘You need a f****** gun mate, that’s doing nothing.’
Sgt Gillespie asked over the radio for an officer equipped with a Taser to join him, just as PC Luke Holden and PCSO Timothy Parry arrived.
DCI Pye told the inquiry: ‘Greg asked, is he ready to go in? And with, very, very little delay, they enter.’
Leaving Mr Parry to guard the door, the two men entered the Hart Space at 11.57am, six seconds after the other two officers arrived, the inquiry was told.
Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: ‘There was no significant pause there at all to formulate some sort of complex plan. They go in very quickly.’
Firearms officers had been called to the scene but the two officers did not wait for them, the inquiry was told.
A court drawn image of Axel Rudakubana on December 18, 2024
When they got inside, they found Rudakubana on the landing and shouted at him to drop the knife, which he did, before they pushed him to the ground and arrested him, helped by PCSO Parry.
A minicab driver called Gary Poland had taken Rudabkubana to the Hart Space but drove away without calling police, the inquiry was told.
Children were seen in the rear dashcam leaving the building and running alongside the taxi and ‘you can hear the children screaming’ DCI Pye said.
Mr Poland looked in the rear-view mirror but still drove off, he added.
The driver did not call the police until 12.36pm, 50 minutes after the attack when he told them: ‘The lad whose done everything, I’ve picked him up.
‘I’m just a bit shook up my heart’s going like I don’t know what.’
He told the call handler where he had picked him up and added: ‘He just seemed very very odd, like he had it planned.
‘I was just about to drive off and then I heard screaming, proper screaming and there was young people coming down the steps and that’s when I’ve shot off.’
Mr Moss asked: ‘Would you have expected a member of the public, acting responsibly, to have called 999 as soon as they got to a place of safety, when it was safe to make that call?’
DCI Pye replied: ‘I would like to think morally that a call would have been made.
‘There was enough evidence that he knew what was happening. You would expect a call to come in.’
The inquiry was told that the killer had accessed a document called ‘Kamikaze death poetry’ in the minutes before he set off to launch his attack.
Rudakabana had cleared his browsing history but when it was recovered there was nothing relevant found.
However, he had also used a tablet device to download a number of pdf documents.
He could not have read them all in the time he had but the inquiry was given a list of the titles.
They included an excerpt from ‘Kamikaze death poetry’ and others which showed an interest in global history which was said to be ‘broadly in line with what he had a habit of looking at.’
They included ‘Divinity and Experience – the religion of the Dinka’, a reference to a tribe in South Sudan, ‘Understanding contemporary Ethiopia,’ ‘The Ethiopian revolution – War in the Horn of Africa,’ between 1975 and 1991, ‘Rebellion in Iraq 869 to 883’ about a slave revolt and ‘Race and rebellion.’
The inquiry, at Liverpool Town Hall, is investigating why several agencies, including the police, the courts, the NHS and social services, who all had contact with Rudakubana, failed to identify the risk he posed.
They will also investigate whether the attack could or should have been prevented.
Rudakubana was under the care of mental health services for several years before the atrocity but was formally discharged just six days before carrying it out, the court heard.
The inquiry continues.
