‘She was so injured, her Daddy couldn’t recognise her’: Victims’ heart-breaking court statements
The children who suffered life-changing injuries during the Southport attacks, as well as the victims’ families, have described in heartbreaking detail the horrors of their shattered lives.
In a series of victim impact statements read out at Liverpool Crown Court, young girls who were violently and repeatedly stabbed described the immense pain, the physical and the psychological scars that they will live with forever; the flashbacks, the screams and the guilt.
Their parents told of the devastating impact to family life, while those who lost their children described how their own lives had been destroyed in an instant.
The seven-year-old girl tried in vain to escape.
She was captured on CCTV desperately trying to leave the building, fleeing for her life, but Axel Rudakubana spotted her and dragged her back inside.
By the time she was captured again on the camera footage, stumbling outside before collapsing, she had been stabbed more than 30 times.
She was so horrifically injured that her own father did not recognise her, her “beautiful long blonde hair covered in so much blood it looked brown”.
She had lost so much blood, she later needed almost her entire body’s volume given back through transfusions.
Her father, who had come to pick both her and her young friend up from the dance class, pulled up outside only to be confronted by a “warzone”.
At first, he thought there had been a car accident.
But just moments later, he was forced to face the unimaginable reality; the extraordinary violence inflicted upon his daughter and the horrors that she had witnessed, horrors that will haunt her forever.
There were children lying on the floor receiving care, with members of the public trying to get a paramedic to help.
Among them was a girl wearing the same clothes as his daughter but her injuries were so severe he had no idea if it was her.
He asked the little girl if she had a brother, and if so, what his name was.
The answer came back. It was his daughter, bleeding out from her arms and back.
“Her Daddy couldn’t recognise her,” her mother reveals in their witness statement. “This is one of many, many moments that tortures both of us.”