Today Axel Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, the attempted murders of eight children and two adults.
On Monday, a British teenager entered a guilty plea to charges of killing three young girls in a July knife attack in northern England, a tragedy that shocked the country and sparked days of riots across the country.
On the day when his trial at Liverpool Crown Court was scheduled to begin, 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana changed his plea from not guilty to guilty.
He entered a guilty plea to the July murders of Bebe King, age 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, age 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, age 9, who were at a dance party in the town of Southport with a Taylor Swift theme.
Along with pledging guilty to ten charges of attempted murder connected to the incident, Rudakubana also admitted to possessing an al Qaeda training manual and the lethal chemical ricin.
There were “serious questions to answer as to how the state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated on Monday afternoon.
“Britain will rightly demand answers. And we will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit,” he said in a statement. “At the centre of this horrific event, there is still a family and community grief that is raw; a pain that not even justice can ever truly heal.”
As the court was getting ready to hear days of testimony regarding the horrific attack, he confessed to the crime.
Julian Goose, the presiding judge who ordered Mr Rudakubana’s sentencing on Thursday, stated that the case will now go quickly to sentencing.
“You will understand it is inevitable the sentence to be imposed upon you will mean a life sentence equivalent,” he told Mr Rudakubana after the guilty pleas
Rudakubana will be sentenced on Thursday, according to Judge Julian Goose, who stated that a life sentence was unavoidable.
Goose pointed out that since the prosecution opening was not anticipated until Tuesday, the relatives of the victims were not present when Rudakubana entered a guilty plea.
When asked to confirm his name, Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time of the incident, first remained silent, as he had done at all prior hearings, indicating that not-guilty pleas had been made in December on his behalf.
Rudakubana, a British national, was taken into custody in the sleepy coastal village north of Liverpool soon after the incident. Although the al Qaeda handbook was found, authorities have stated that the incident was not being investigated for possible terrorist connections.
False rumours that the alleged killer was a radical Islamist migrant went viral on social media following the killings, causing widespread unrest in Southport.
As the riots expanded throughout Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer blamed the rioting on far-right thuggery and attacks on hotels and mosques that housed asylum seekers.
Later, it was discovered that several individuals, including a neo-Nazi, had assisted in organising violent outbursts that resulted in the injuries of numerous police officers and included assaults on mosques and hotels where asylum seekers were lodging.
According to English court regulations, Mr Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time of the incident, would typically have been kept anonymous until he was 18.
However, to stop the dissemination of false information, a judge took the extraordinary step of publishing his name a few days after the attack.
Dozens of people have received prison sentences and hundreds have been accused for their roles in the deadly turmoil that swept the nation last summer.