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Teen who killed 3 girls at Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England sentenced to over 50 years

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Teen who killed 3 girls at Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England sentenced to over 50 years
News

News

Teen who killed 3 girls at Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England sentenced to over 50 years

2025-01-24 01:50 Last Updated At:02:00

LONDON (AP) — A teenager who stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England was sentenced Thursday to more than 50 years in prison for what a judge called “the most extreme, shocking and exceptionally serious crime.”

Judge Julian Goose said 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana “wanted to try and carry out mass murder of innocent, happy young girls.”

Goose said that he couldn't impose a sentence of life without parole, because Rudakubana was under 18 when he committed the crime.

But the judge said he must serve 52 years, minus the six months he's been in custody, before being considered for parole, and “it is likely he will never be released.”

Rudakubana was 17 when he attacked the children in the seaside town of Southport in July, killing Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. He wounded eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, along with teacher Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, a local businessman who intervened.

The attack shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching. The government has announced a public inquiry into how the system failed to stop the killer, who had been referred to the authorities multiple times over his obsession with violence.

Rudakubana faced three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder and additional charges of possessing a knife, the poison ricin and an al-Qaida manual. He unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty on all charges on Monday.

But he wasn't in court to hear sentence passed on Thursday.

Hours earlier he had been led into the dock at Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England, dressed in a gray prison tracksuit. But as prosecutors began outlining the evidence, Rudakubana interrupted by shouting that he felt ill and wanted to see a paramedic.

Goose ordered the accused to be removed when he continued shouting. A person in the courtroom shouted “Coward!” as Rudakubana was taken out.

The hearing continued without him.

Prosecutor Deanna Heer described how the attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation when 26 little girls were “gathered around the tables making bracelets and singing along to Taylor Swift songs.”

Rudakubana, armed with a large knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher.

The court was shown video of the suspect arriving at the Hart Space venue in a taxi and entering the building. Within seconds, screams erupted and children ran outside in panic, some of them wounded. One girl made it to the doorway, but was pulled back inside by the attacker. She was stabbed 32 times but survived.

Gasps and sobs could be heard in court as the videos played.

Heer said two of the dead children “suffered particularly horrific injuries which are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature.” One of the dead girls had 122 injuries, while another suffered 85 wounds.

The prosecutor said Rudakubana had “a longstanding obsession with violence, killing, genocide.”

“His only purpose was to kill. And he targeted the youngest and most vulnerable in society,” she said, as relatives of the victims watched on in the courtroom.

Heer said that when he was taken to a police station, Rudakubana was heard to say: "It’s a good thing those children are dead, I’m so glad, I’m so happy.”

The killings triggered days of anti-immigrant violence across the country after far-right activists seized on incorrect reports that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in the U.K. Some suggested the crime was a jihadi attack, and alleged that police and the government were withholding information.

Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Christian parents from Rwanda, and investigators haven't been able to pin down his motivation. Police found documents about subjects including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs on his devices.

In the years before the attack, he had been reported to multiple authorities over his violent interests and actions. All of the agencies failed to spot the danger he posed.

In 2019, he phoned a children's advice line to ask “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?" He said he had taken a knife to school because he wanted to kill someone who was bullying him. Two months later, he attacked a fellow student with a hockey stick and was convicted of assault.

Prosecutors said Rudakubana was referred three times to the government’s anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14 — once after researching school shootings in class, then for uploading pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to Instagram and for researching a London terror attack.

But they concluded his crimes should not be classed as terrorism because Rudakubana had no discernable political or religious cause. Heer said “his purpose was the commission of mass murder, not for a particular end, but as an end in itself.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week the country must face up to a “new threat” from violent individuals whose mix of motivations test the traditional definition of terrorism.

“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history, we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve,” Starmer said after the sentencing.

Several relatives and survivors read emotional statements in court, describing how the attack had shattered their lives.

Lucas, 36, who ran the dance class, said that “the trauma of being both a victim and a witness has been horrendous.”

“I cannot give myself compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?” she said.

A 14-year-old survivor, who can’t be named because of a court order, said that while she was physically recovering. “we will all have to live with the mental pain from that day forever.”

“I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing that we think you’re a coward,” she said.

The prosecutor read out a statement from the parents of Alice Da Silva Aguiar, who said their daughter’s killing had “shattered our souls.”

“We used to cook for three. Now we only cook for two. It doesn’t seem right,” they said. “Alice was our purpose for living, so what do we do now?”

Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Southport stabbings suspect Axel Rudakubana, 18, shouting from the dock as he appeared at Liverpool Crown Court, for his sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, in Liverpool, England, Thursday Jan. 23, 2025. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)

Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Southport stabbings suspect Axel Rudakubana, 18, shouting from the dock as he appeared at Liverpool Crown Court, for his sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, in Liverpool, England, Thursday Jan. 23, 2025. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)

A prison van believed to contain Axel Rudakubana arrives at Liverpool Crown Court for his sentencing after he admitted the murders of three girls at a dance class in Southport, on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025 in Liverpool, England (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)

A prison van believed to contain Axel Rudakubana arrives at Liverpool Crown Court for his sentencing after he admitted the murders of three girls at a dance class in Southport, on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025 in Liverpool, England (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)

FILE - Tributes are seen outside the Town Hall in Southport, England, Aug. 5, 2024 after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club the week before. (AP Photo/Darren Staples, File)

FILE - Tributes are seen outside the Town Hall in Southport, England, Aug. 5, 2024 after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club the week before. (AP Photo/Darren Staples, File)

In this Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook, Southport stabbings suspect Axel Rudakubana appears on the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court, where he has pleaded guilty to killing three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, in Liverpool, England, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)

In this Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook, Southport stabbings suspect Axel Rudakubana appears on the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court, where he has pleaded guilty to killing three young girls and wounded 10 other people in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, in Liverpool, England, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Google's online calendar has removed default references for a handful of holidays and cultural events — with users noticing that mentions of Pride and Black History Month, as well as other observances, no longer appear in their desktop and mobile applications.

The omissions gained attention online over the last week, particularly around upcoming events that are no longer automatically listed. But Google says it made the change midway through last year.

The California-based tech giant said it manually added "a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries” for several years, supplementing public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com that have been used to populate Google Calendar for over a decade. Still, the company added, it received feedback about some other missing events and countries.

“Maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” Google said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. "So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.”

Google did not provide a full list of the cultural events it added prior to last year's change — and therefore no longer appear by default today.

But social media users and product experts posting to online community boards have pointed to several holidays and cultural observances that they're not seeing anymore. In addition to the first days of Pride Month and Black History Month, that includes the start of Indigenous Peoples Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Verge first reported on some of these omissions last week.

Norway-based Time and Date AS, which operates timeanddate.com, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The website shows numerous country-by-country lists of holidays and observances from around the world — some of which include cultural awareness events like Pride and Black History Month — but those specific to public holidays are more limited.

Separate from this Calendar shift, Google has also gained attention over its more recent decision to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali on Google Maps — following orders from President Donald Trump to rename the body of water bordering the U.S., Mexico and Cuba the Gulf of America, as well as revert the title of America’s highest mountain peak back to Mt. McKinley.

“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said last month. The company added that its maps will reflect any updates to the Geographic Names Information System, a database of more than 1 million geographic features in the U.S.

Google confirmed Monday that the Gulf of America name had gone into effect. Google Maps users in the U.S. now only see the Gulf of America name, whereas those in other countries see both names. Denali, however, still appears on both Google Maps and the GNIS.

And the new names on Google Maps aren't the only change the company has made following recent actions from the Trump administration. Last week, Google outlined plans to scrap some of its diversity hiring targets — joining a growing list of U.S. companies that have abandoned or scaled back their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Google's move notably came in the wake of an executive order aimed, in part, at pressuring government contractors to end DEI initiatives. As a federal contractor, Google said it was evaluating required changes.

FILE - A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, file)

FILE - A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, file)

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