Southport families call for inquiry to bring accountability

The families of two girls killed in the Southport stabbings have called for a public inquiry to bring accountability and said they hope other children can be protected.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the parents of Elsie Stancombe, seven, and six-year-old Bebe King spoke about their memories of the girls who, along with nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, were murdered by Axel Rudakubana at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.

Last month, the Government announced a public inquiry after 18-year-old Rudakubana was sentenced for murdering the three girls and attempting to murder 10 others, including eight children.

Jenni Stancombe, 35, who said her daughter “didn’t know bad”, said: “If somebody’s made a decision that’s resulted in an element of failure then there needs to be accountability for that and I believe the announcement of the inquiry will do that and it will hold people to account for some of the decisions they’ve made.”

After Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the attack at the beginning of his trial last month, it was revealed he had been referred to the Government’s Prevent scheme on three occasions but the cases were closed.

Elsie’s father David Stancombe, 36, said: “No-one else should ever go through something like this.

“If it was that obvious that he’d been flagged up so many times like, what?”

Mrs Stancombe added: “I’d hate for anyone to go through this.”

She said they were a “hard-working family”.

“The only thing we wanted from the state is to protect us,” she said.

Asked if Rudakubana’s life sentence, with a minimum term of 52 years, brought justice, Mr Stancombe said: “It doesn’t make us feel any better.

“The number’s massive, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t change how I feel.

“If he spends the rest of his life in jail it doesn’t bring back Elsie, does it?”

Mrs Stancombe said the family had met singer Swift and her family weeks after the attack at her Wembley show and shown her pictures of Elsie, which she asked to keep.

She said: “If Elsie knew that Taylor knew her, it would be like all her dreams had come true.”

The couple, who said they “won’t let evil win this”, have set up the charity Elsie’s Story in their daughter’s memory.

Mrs Stancombe said: “So many times where we have said we’ll never feel true happiness again, ever.

“We might just feel a little bit of something when we make another child smile, for Elsie.”

Bebe’s mother, who was not identified for legal reasons, told the programme she hoped her daughter would still have an impression on the world.

She said: “She can help just the future, protecting children, and I believe she is going to move mountains regardless.”

She told the programme: “Our girls just need to be safe, our children need to be safer and protected.”

She added: “As parents, it is just really important for us to be able to remove Bebe from the past couple of weeks.

“She was a human being. She was a beautiful, funny, crazy, gorgeous girl and her legacy, it can’t be defined by what’s happened.

“I feel like a lioness and I have got to protect my child and I have got to make sure that people know that she isn’t defined by this.”

She was in tears as she spoke of the family’s final moments with Bebe in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

“She was in her pyjamas, we read to her and the family visited her,” she said.

“The final day we lay next to her and we did our final goodbye.”

Bebe’s father said the decision to televise the judge’s sentencing remarks had “really hurt”.

The family’s solicitor Sara Stanger said they wanted online safety to be “paramount” in the inquiry.

She said: “They were all really shocked to hear that the videos that the offender accessed were all available on the open internet.”