Senior officer testifies he feared multiple attackers in Southport massacre

On the day of the Southport attack, Chief Inspector Andrew Hughes, one of two force incident managers in the Merseyside Police control room, testified at a public inquiry that he feared Axel Rudakubana was not acting alone due to the scale of the injuries. Calls reporting 'a boy with a knife' began just after 11:45 a.m. on July 29, when the 17-year-old went on a rampage at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class in the seaside town. Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7; Bebe King, 6; and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, were killed, and 10 others were injured.

Armed response vehicles were dispatched, and Hughes directed unarmed officers to assist if it could be done safely. Two officers—Sergeant Gregory Gillespie and PC Luke Holden, who carried a Taser—entered the building and detained Rudakubana. As casualty reports flooded in, Hughes said his initial fear grew that other offenders could be at large and could pose a risk to responders. 'The amount of casualties... I found it difficult to understand how one person could inflict that many injuries to that many people, so a consideration for me was that there might be more offenders that we hadn't yet encountered,' he told the inquiry.

Rudakubana refused to provide his name at the scene and was not identified until taxi driver Gary Poland, 52, who dropped him at Hart Space, where the class was held, called police about 50 minutes later. Poland later apologized for not calling earlier. The taxi driver’s records showed Rudakubana was a resident in Banks and flagged with a knife-offence warning; the log noted he had been logging onto school websites involving mass shootings and spoke about guns and beheadings. The information prompted police to search Rudakubana's home in Old School Close with additional armed officers.

Hughes said he had considered multiple scenarios, including that the attack might be part of a broader operation or that more offenders could be present or that family members could be at risk. After the initial 999 call, authorities were directed to a rendezvous point about a mile and a half away for safety; Hughes overruled five minutes later, saying officers had an 'immediate duty to protect life.' By 11:46 a.m., a second 999 report described an eight-year-old girl stabbed but alive; another child had been injured. He acknowledged that he could have declared a major incident earlier than 12:14 p.m., but argued casualty numbers needed to be confirmed and that an earlier declaration would not necessarily have changed resource speed.

City counsel referenced lessons from the Manchester Arena attack in 2017, suggesting that in certain knife incidents it may be appropriate to forward-train unarmed officers with caution. Hughes said the Southport attack was chaotic but that his training prepared him to handle it, adding that he did not feel overwhelmed. The inquiry heard that cab driver Gary Poland is due to testify in person on the following day. Rudakubana, who was 18 at the time of sentencing, was jailed for 52 years for the murders in January at Liverpool Crown Court. The inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall continues.