Girl stabbed in Southport attack calls for first aid training in schools

A girl who thought she was “going to die” after being stabbed in the Southport attack has called for mandatory first aid training in schools.

In an interview with Sky News marking one year since the attack, when Axel Rudakubana killed three schoolchildren, the girl said it was “disgusting” that young people carried knives.

The girl had attended the Taylor Swift dance class with her younger sister on July 29 last year.

She was stabbed in her arm and her back by Rudakubana, during the attack in which he murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and attempted to kill eight other children and two adults.

Describing the incident, the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said:

“Some of the girls were sat down in a circle making bracelets with the teachers, and then a couple of them were getting up to get beads and I was stood in between two tables, and he came through the doors and stabbed a little girl in front of me, and then came for me and stabbed my arm.

“I turned and then he stabbed my back, even though I didn’t feel it at the time, and then I went on to the landing where there was a bunch of girls huddled around, so I just started pushing them down the stairs, telling them to get out and to run.”

She added: “I was thinking ‘Where’s my sister?’ and ‘We need to get out’.

“So I was just trying to get as many people out as I could, just trying to help them and get them to safety.”

“I just thought I was going to die,” the girl added.

Asked what she remembered most about her attacker, she said “his eyes”.

“They just didn’t look human, they looked possessed.

“It was kind of like a dream, I don’t know how else to explain it, it was kind of like a dream and you’re on a movie set and you’re watching yourself go through it and make these decisions.”

The girl said the neighbours who helped the victims and sheltered some of the children in their house “deserve recognition”, as do the other girls who were present at the attack.

She has since launched a campaign for children to receive mandatory first aid training in school, and a clothing range called Go Anywhere, Be Anything, which highlights knife crime.

“Everyone that’s going out and carrying knives is getting younger and younger and to think that it’s people my age is disgusting,” the girl said.

“To think that anyone does it at all is disgusting.

“But I just want to try and do the best I can to let people know that it’s not OK to do that.”

After learning that Rudakubana had pleaded guilty, meaning that she was no longer required to give evidence at his trial, the girl said she was “raging” and that it had been “so much stress” preparing to face him in the courtroom.

The killer, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 52 years, in January.

On her hopes for the inquiry into the incident, and whether it could have been prevented, she said: “That they get the facts of all the failings that happened, and that we rectify it so that it doesn’t happen again, because he just slipped through the net didn’t he, when you think about it?”

She added: “You live in fear every day that it could happen again, and my sister is like, just nervous leaving the house, going to school.

“When she’s in the car, she’s asking if the doors are locked and if anyone can get in. She just… it’s truly traumatised.”

Of the effects on herself a year on, the girl said: “I’m physically getting better every day and healing.

“Obviously, my scars stay as a reminder but everyone on that day is going to have mental scars forever.”

Get the latest news and updates for Southport HERE.