Mother of Southport victim calls for answers at inquiry

The heartbroken mother of a seven-year-old girl killed in the Southport attack has told a public inquiry: “I need to understand how this happened.”

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, died along with Bebe King, six, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar when Axel Rudakubana carried out the stabbing at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.

Giving impact evidence to the Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall on Monday, her mother Jenni Stancombe, 37, said: “Elsie only went to dance, make bracelets, and I never got to bring her home.

“I walk past an empty bed every night, I stare into her room praying this nightmare will end, but it never does, we live it every day.

“We are good parents, just like so many others across the country on that day, wanting to do something nice for our little girl at the start of the holidays.

“But instead, we didn’t get to bring her home. We lost everything that day. And I need to understand how this happened.”

She called for a focus on preventing individuals with an intent to cause harm from ever reaching the point of carrying out such acts.

She added: “We will fight for justice, for change, to keep our children safe, changes need to be made to prevent this from ever happening again.

“This should never have happened in a safe and just society, this cannot happen, no other parent should feel this pain.”

Ms Stancombe, who sat alongside her husband David, 37, as she gave the evidence, told the inquiry their world “shattered” when she received a phone call telling them someone had stabbed the girls in the dance class.

She said they ran to the car and drove to the studio, on Hart Street.

“I was screaming Elsie’s name,” she said.

“David and I both reached the front door to the Hart Space, where two police officers lifted David from his feet and carried him back as he fought to get inside.”

She described the “devastation” and said she went round injured girls looking for her daughter.

She was initially told Elsie had been taken to hospital and was repeatedly asked what she had been wearing, she said.

She told the inquiry: “A police officer walked past me and told David someone that matched Elsie’s description was still inside the building and hadn’t made it.

“David knelt down in front of me and just looked at me. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them. I insisted they had it wrong and they needed to find out where she was.

“I now know Elsie never left the building. All the time I was there, I thought she was receiving help, Elsie could not be helped.

“The life we had worked so hard to build for our girls destroyed in that moment.”

The inquiry is also due to hear evidence from the parents of Bebe and Alice on Monday.