A UK judge is due on Thursday to sentence a teenager who brutally murdered three young girls in a stabbing spree last year that sparked the country’s worst riots in over a decade.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty earlier this week to the killings, as well as to 10 counts of attempted murder and possessing a blade, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, northwest England.
He also admitted production of a biological toxin, ricin, as well as possessing an Al-Qaeda training manual.
Judge Julian Goose is scheduled to sentence the teenager at Liverpool Crown Court from 11:00am (1100 GMT), after his guilty plea Monday halted his impending trial. Goose has warned that he faces a long custodial sentence.
Rudakubana’s multiple appearances in court to date have been marked by his uncooperative behaviour, with the defendant repeatedly refusing to speak and declining to stand in court on Monday, where he muttered “guilty” to each of the charges.
Family members of the victims are expected in court for the sentencing.
The teenager’s rampage last July shocked the UK, triggering anti-immigrant riots in more than a dozen English and Northern Irish towns and cities, amid viral misinformation that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible.
Rudakubana was in fact born in Cardiff to parents of Rwandan origin, and lived in Banks, a village northeast of Southport.
His Christian church-going parents, both ethnic Tutsis, came to Britain in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to UK media.
The attack has not been treated as a terror incident and he was never charged with terrorism offences — prompting criticism from some.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed Tuesday to update terror legislation “if the law needs to change”, to recognise what he called the new threat of individuals intent on “extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake”.
Meanwhile, interior minister Yvette Cooper announced a public inquiry would probe how police, courts and welfare services “failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed”.
