THE mum of a nine-year-old girl murdered in the Southport attack, has described how she arrived to the scene to find “panic and terror in the air”.
Alice da Silva Aguiar died along with Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, when Axel Rudakubana carried out the stabbing at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.
PAAlice da Silva Aguiar’s parents Sergio and Alex arrive at Liverpool Town Hall for the Southport Inquiry[/caption]
AFPPolice on Hart Street Southport, Merseyside, following the horror rampage[/caption]
Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar (left to right) were brutally murdered during a Taylor Swift themed dance classAFP
Giving impact evidence to the Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall on Monday, Alice’s mum Alexandra Aguiar said she arrived a little early to collect her daughter from the dance class.
She said she could see injured girls all over the car park and ran into the building where there was “devastation everywhere”.
Mrs Aguiar, 34, said: “I have never experienced fear like it, not knowing where my little girl was, I ran all around looking into little injured girls faces searching for my baby girl.”
She said – sat alongside Alice’s dad Sergio Aguiar, 38, after what “seemed like hours” she found her daughter lying on the floor, with people tending to her wounds.
She continued: “It’s hard to explain the relief that I’d eventually found her but the hurt and devastation knowing she’d been injured by him.
“My happy, loving, innocent little girl hurt by a monster.”
Mrs Aguiar said Alice was taken to Southport hospital but died after 13 hours.
She said: “Thirteen long hours of anguish and distress for her daddy and I. We just hope that she couldn’t feel any pain and that she wasn’t scared. This haunts us both.”
She said since the attack she had flashbacks, nightmares and huge feelings of guilt.
She said: “We can only describe that day as horror, the worst day of our lives, but its not over for us, it will never be over for us, as our little girl with the long black hair and big brown eyes should be here with us now living her life to the full. But she’s not. We live with the trauma of this every day.”
She said the thought of being strong and positive for Alice got the family through each day.
She said: “I would just be grateful if you could keep the thought and image of Alice in your minds throughout this process.
“She was the most lovable, caring, beautiful, funny little girl you could have ever wished to meet. We as her parents are now broken from our loss and we will suffer with trauma from this for the rest of our lives.”
Mrs Aguiar went on to say: “She was everything to us, she was our world, our everything. Since having Alice everything we did revolved around her. We were the perfect happy, little family.
“When Alice was born all, you could see was her head full of jet-black hair and vert large beautiful brown eyes. It was impossible not to notice her. She was absolutely beautiful.
“She was most precious thing that we had ever seen. We were both immediately so in love with her. She just completed our lives. She made us whole.
“My husband Sergio is originally from Madeira, and I am from Venezuela we came to the UK to give ourselves and our future children a better life.
PAElsie Dot Stancombe’s parents Jenni (left) and David (right) with Bebe King’s parents Lauren and Ben (centre)[/caption]
PAFamiles of the victims with their legal team arrive[/caption]
Axel Rudakubana was 17 years old when he murdered the three little girls
“We made a promise to each other that we would give our beautiful daughter, everything that we did not have ourselves when growing up. This was our promise that we made.”
Also during the hearing, the mum of fellow victim Elsie said: “I need to understand how this happened.”
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.
PARudakubana received a 52-year sentence in January[/caption]
The sea of floral tributes to the tragic victims on Maple Street, SouthportPA Wire
The horse-drawn hearse outside a celebration of Elsie Dot Stancombe at St John’s Church, In August, 2024Getty Images
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.”
Bebe’s parents Lauren King, 42, and Ben King, 43, were also at the inquiry.
Mrs King said: “If I had to describe Bebe in three words, they would be joyful, hilarious, and magical – but even that barely scratches the surface.
EnterpriseAlice was described by her mum as the ‘most lovable, caring, beautiful, funny little girl’[/caption]
Elsie was a devoted ‘Swiftie’ who loved to dancePA Wire
Bebe was the youngest girl killed by RudakubanaAP
“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. She was simply wonderful. Her light shone so brightly that people couldn’t help but be drawn to her.”
“I remember sitting eating porridge of a morning, and she’d stand up on the couch, lean over me, and just as I lifted the spoon, she’d snatch it – eating it right off my spoon with the cheekiest grin and a laugh that filled the room.”
Mrs King said mother and daughter would sing songs together and Bebe had loved Taylor Swift.
She said: “But something that should have been safe, innocent, and joyful was allowed to become a place of danger and horror.
“A children’s class – a place where she should have been cared for and protected – became the place where her life was taken, because of failures that should never have happened.
“From that day, we would never see our Bebe again. She was just six years old.”
Mrs King described the events of the day of the attack.
She told the public 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.
“A part of me is gone. I am broken beyond repair. The physical pain I have endured since that day has been debilitating. I am grieving not only the loss of Bebe, but also the loss of who I once was.
“I replay that day over and over, countless times, every single day. I picture him attacking my beautiful Bebe, imagine her fear, her pain.
“His eyes, his evil eyes, never leave my mind.
“Panic shadows me everywhere. Behind the mask, I carry an emptiness I cannot describe.”
Mrs King, often dabbing her eyes to wipe away tears, continued: “The ripples of this horror extend out endlessly. Our family will never be the same again.
“Our friends feel helpless and heartbroken. And beyond them, the impact spreads to Bebe’s friends, their parents, her school, her dance classes, her wider community.
“There is a group of us in the hundreds who have been changed forever – and when multiplied by every other victim and their loved ones, the impact is staggering.
“This was not just the loss of one little girl, or one family torn apart. This was the tearing of a whole community. And yet all of it – every layer of grief, trauma, and destruction – stems back to the same truth: this was preventable.
“It happened because of failures that should never have been allowed.
“No statement, no report, no apology will ever bring Bebe back. But this inquiry cannot become another box-ticking exercise.
“The truth must be faced. Bebe was not just a victim. Her life was stolen because systems failed her. And while nothing said in this inquiry will ever bring her back, it can, and must, ensure that her death is not in vain.
“Her name was Bebe. She was just six years old. And she deserved so much more. She deserved to live.”
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