Inquiry began yesterday.
Lots of heartbreaking and revealing comments from Rudakubana's family members over the last 24 hours, about their family history, Rudakubana's nature and personality, and how they've tried to make sense of the attack.
Alphonse Rudakubana describes how he came to the UK after surviving the Rwandan genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk
Seems the family fled the Rwandan genocide, which is how they came to the UK in the first place. Both Rudakubana brothers are autistic. Dion (the older brother) ended up in a wheelchair because of a muscular disorder, which resulted in Axel basically turning on him, because now Dion got more love and attention (as Axel saw it). Axel apparently used to hit Dion and would have violent outbursts, including smashing things up in the house.
Axel was expelled from school in 2019, which is when his behaviour got even worse. Parents apparently "lost control" of Axel. Seems he was reading online that smacking kids to discipline them amounts to abuse, so he turned on his dad, Alphonse, specifically for smacking him on the bum as a child. Dion says Axel was being bullied at school but that Axel never spoke about it at home. Dion says that by 2022 he was worried about Axel killing Alphonse if an argument turned nasty.
Dion stopped speaking to Axel in 2023 and moved out of the family home.
Police made a visit to the Rudakubanas in 2019. Axel was taking knives to school - the school denies this. Axel then attacked a fellow school pupil with a hockey stick in December 2019. He was transferred to a different school before the pandemic hit, but he stopped attending any classes during lockdown. Any attempts to make him leave the house resulted in bad tempers and outbursts during this time.
Axel was referred to Prevent three times. Brother didn't know Prevent existed or that Axel was posting concerning things on social media. Axel was referred to social services after the hockey stick attack, and never usually came down from his bedroom during family meetings and gatherings. Axel was prescribed medication for anxiety but stopped taking it - had CAMHS meetings but refused to believe he had autism, insisting that he had ADHD instead.
Axel was caught with a knife on a bus in 2022 and was brought home by police. He was then cautioned by police again after trying to steal windscreen wipers from a car during an argument with Alphonse, which seems to have stemmed from Axel being denied access to a computer. Axel apparently had poison in the family home. Dion says his parents were concealing knives from Axel at the time.
Dion says Axel ordered and sold things on Amazon. He instructed his family to never touch boxes that arrived and would become violent and upset if they did. Family started to fear for their lives, as did friends of the family. His Alphonse was afraid of Axel, and Axel then began talking to himself frequently. The day of the attack, Dion was being helped in the shower by Alphonse when they noticed Axel (wearing a face mask) leave the house.
They realised Axel never left the house on his own and became quite scared, but after his mum said Axel was presumably just going for a walk, they calmed down. At this point they found empty packaging for a knife parcel in the house. It had been left in the washing machine. They didn't call the police because they again presumed he was just out walking, even with the knife (like prior incidents). Dion says a friend then told him that there had been "stabbings in town".
Dion believes Axel killed children because "children are very valuable and they are the future of society and it would hurt society very badly".
Alphonse says they didn't tell the kids about the Rwandan genocide until they were older, because of the horrors they lived through. They moved to Southport in 2012, 10 years after arriving in the UK. Axel initially did well at school but started deteriorating in 2019, after which point he was expelled. Alphonse says Axel began playing Fortnite all the time, even after Alphonse had tried to set parental controls on the computer.
Alphonse says he tried to request an SEN assessment in 2019. He contacted a GP about this but never heard back. Alphonse told Dion that Axel was "dangerous" and warned that "provoking" him could start violent outbursts. By 2021, Alphonse believed that Axel "hated" him. Asked why he didn't call the police, Alphonse says he believed Axel's anger was directed only towards him rather than anyone else.
RE: the incident that saw Axel try to steal windscreen wipers from a car, Alphonse says Axel kicked off because he didn't like a meal his dad had cooked (he doesn't mention the ban from the computer). Alphonse says he didn't report on every single one of these violent outbursts (only some of them) because he knew Axel was autistic and thought it was all just part of the condition.
Meeting carries on this afternoon.