Southport victim’s mum says they’re living a nightmare every day

The mother of a seven-year-old girl killed in the Southport attack told a public inquiry of the nightmare they live every day.

Elsie Dot Stancombe was at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year when she was stabbed to death by Axel Rudakubana.

Bebe King, six, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar also died, while nine other children and two adults were injured.

Giving impact evidence to the Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall today, Elsie’s 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.’

Ms Stancombe said more needs to be done to prevent those with an intent to cause harm from reaching the point where the commit such acts.

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

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

Sitting alongside her husband, David, 37, she told the enquiry the couple’s world ‘shattered’ when she received a phone telling her someone had stabbed the girls in the dance class, which was held at Hart Space, in Hart Street.

She recalls running to the car and driving to the studio. .

‘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.’

Ms Stancombe said she rushed around the 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.

‘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,’ she told the enquiry.

‘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 today.

Rudakubana was jailed for at least 52 years in January.

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