Stabbings - UK & Worldwide

Not a knife crime but: Teen given life sentence over school hammer attack..by George Thorpe, BBC News, Devon

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Police at scene of the attack at the Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, where the attacks took place

A teenage boy has been detained for life to serve a minimum term of 12 years after trying to kill three people in an attack with a hammer at a boarding school.

The 17-year-old - who cannot be named for legal reasons - attacked two roommates, aged 15 and 16 at the time, during the early hours of 9 June 2023 at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, leaving them with severe injuries.

He also attacked housemaster Henry Roffe-Silvester, who suffered six wounds to his head.

The teenager, who claimed he was sleepwalking during the incident, was sentenced at Exeter Crown Court on Friday after previously being found guilty of three counts of attempted murder.

Sentencing him, Judge Mrs Justice Cutts said: "You knew the difference between right and wrong and you intended to kill those boys."

During a trial which ended in June, the court heard the defendant - who was 16 at the time of the attack - had armed himself with three claw hammers.

The trial heard the teenager had admitted assaulting the victims but claimed he was sleepwalking when the attack took place.

Giving evidence, he claimed he kept two hammers by his bed for "protection" from a "zombie apocalypse".

He added: "I feel very terribly sorry for all three individuals because of what I did to them.

"I feel very sorry for everyone, the families and themselves."

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Chilling images show 3 claw hammers used by a public schoolboy to attack 2 sleeping students and a teacher

The court heard he waited for his two roommates to fall asleep before attacking them.

The pair suffered injuries including skull fractures, a punctured lung and internal bleeding, with the court being told both were now living with "long-term consequences" of the incident.

Mr Roffe-Silvester was hit several times over the head with a hammer when he went to investigate what was happening when he was awoken in his quarters by the incident, the court was told.

Sentencing, Mrs Justice Cutts said the defendant was "dangerous".

She added she accepted things "would be difficult" for the teenager in custody, but felt there was a "significant risk" he could behave in a similar manner again.

"You planned your offences and used hammers you had bought as weapons," the judge said.

"You knew full well if you hit the boys multiple times with the hammers they would die."

Timeline of the Southport murders and social media.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c99v90813j5o

We need answers, says family of murdered MP David Amess..by Vicky Wong, BBC News

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Sir David was stabbed to death while meeting constituents at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on October 15th 2021

"We have a lot of questions, and somebody needs to answer them," the daughter of murdered Conservative MP Sir David Amess has said.

Katie Amess told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the authorities had failed to adequately protect her father and her family wanted an investigation.

Ali Harbi Ali stabbed the Southend West MP to death during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on 15 October 2021. He is in jail serving a whole-life prison sentence.

The Home Office and Essex Police said it was inappropriate to comment because of ongoing legal proceedings, referring to legal action Ms Amess began earlier this year.

Speaking to Today's Mishal Husain, Ms Amess said: "Nobody is being given any answers... so that we can learn from our mistakes and make sure this doesn't happen again. "

She said there were questions as to why police did not respond to protect her father when an immediate threat had been reported.

She said her brother had received a phone call the night before the attack, saying Sir David, 69, was going to be killed and that this was reported to the police.

The call was later found out to be from unrelated parties - but Ms Amess said that does not matter because they "should have gone" to Sir David's constituency surgery the following day.

"Just one threat should be enough for you to go and protect somebody."

She added: "If they were there, my dad probably wouldn't be dead.

"And I think we need to have a full investigation into why they didn't show up, and people need to know the answers to this so that we can prevent it happening again."

Essex Police said it had immediately launched an investigation following the phone call and a woman and man were arrested. It said like all police forces, it does not provide officers to police MP constituency surgeries.

"This incident and the murder of Sir David were not linked in any way," the force added.

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Andrew Rosindell (left) with members of the music man project unveil a statue of murdered MP Sir David Amess on Chalkwell seafront, in Southend

Ms Amess is also calling for a full investigation and disclosure of how Ali - who was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life without parole in 2022 - fell through the cracks of national security.

During the trial, it emerged that Ali had been referred to the government's counter-extremism programme, Prevent, in 2014 and 2015 when he was a teenager.

Essex senior coroner Lincoln Brookes decided in July not to resume Sir David’s inquest, which had been adjourned once Ali was charged with murder.

In a report explaining his decision, he said there was so much of a gap between the Prevent intervention and the murder of Sir David that there was "no evidential basis to consider this attack was possibly preventable so many years and imponderables later."

But Ms Amess dismisses that, saying: "Why on earth would you not want an inquest into this?

"The point of Prevent is to track down terrorists and stop them before they carry out their attack. That is what Prevent is meant to do.

"The police had a phone call the night before, why on earth would they not go to the surgery the next day?

"There's so many people that are at fault here, and nobody is being given any answers, because I'm not being allowed a full public, open inquest, so that we can learn from our mistakes and make sure this doesn't happen again."

High Court papers show that Ms Amess, an actress who lives in California, filed a personal injury claim against the Home Office and Essex Police in December.

But she told the BBC: "I can't actually do the civil claim, because that would cost, like, hundreds of thousands of pounds that obviously I don't have.

"So my only hope was to do this inquest, and that has been taken from me."

Essex Police said it was aware a claim form had been filed at court, but "as these papers have not been served on our force, we are unable to comment any further upon them".

The force added that Sir David had been a "heroic public servant" and "in the immediate aftermath of his murder, two of our heroic unarmed officers ran into the face of danger, trying desperately to save him and of course detaining his killer.

“Several other of our officers attended shortly afterwards and worked with paramedic colleagues to help save Sir David, sadly they were unable to do this."

It added that it regularly reviewed and advised around security arrangements for the county's MPs.

“If information or intelligence comes to light to give us cause for concern of the safety of an MP we would of course advise and guide them to keep them safe and provide a policing presence where necessary."

The Home Office said Prevent was a vital tool in tackling terrorism.

"The attack on Sir David Amess was an awful tragedy, the safety of members of Parliament is paramount and significant work has been taken forward in response to his tragic killing," it said.

Ms Amess also paid tribute to her father as "the most hardest-working person I've ever met", describing him as someone who loved helping people and who was "full of life and enigmatic and passionate".

She said it was now "so hard" for her to be in Southend "because it just reminds me of my father".

"I just wish that he was here to see all of this and to see Southend as a city."

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Ali, a British citizen and son of a former media adviser to a prime minister of Somalia, repeatedly stabbed Amess in the 2021 attack for what he said was revenge for the lawmaker's support for airstrikes on Syria

Agreed.
Too many Muslims involved in our law.Too many right on wokers too.

I very rarely post or read this section. But ffs.
An Islamic extremist murders 3 innocent children. But this is not terror related? What else would his motive have been?
The initial anger was driven by mis-information that the murderer was an asylum seeker.
The truth of the matter is the murderer was an Islamic extremist.
Which leads to exactly the same degree of anger.
Abusing the Police and causing public damage is totally unacceptable.
But the anger is understandable.

Government became aware of new Southport charges in last few weeks..by Hannah Miller, Political correspondent

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The government knew Southport triple murder suspect Axel Rudakubuna could face two further terror charges 'weeks ago'

The most senior figures in government first became aware of the possibility of new charges against the suspect in the Southport murders in the past few weeks, the BBC has been told.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said it was "not correct" to say the government had been involved in withholding facts from the public.

It comes after the two candidates for the Conservative leadership said the government had questions to answer about the new charges.

Axel Rudakubana, 18 - who is accused of murdering three young girls in Southport - is facing two further charges, including one under the terrorism act.

On Tuesday he was charged with production of a biological toxin contrary to Section 1 of the Biological Weapons Act 1974.

He has also been charged with possessing a PDF document of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing to or preparing an act of terrorism, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Counter Terrorism Police are not currently treating the Southport attack itself as a terrorist incident.

The teenager had already been charged with the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar who died at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29th July.

To charge someone under the Biological Weapons Act, the Crown Prosecution Service has to obtain consent from the government's law officers - the attorney general or solicitor general.

The BBC has been told that in this case, consent was requested in recent weeks, and granted "within days".

The teenager had been due in court in Liverpool for a pre-trial preparation hearing last Friday, 25th October.

That was postponed in order for all the charges to be dealt with together at Westminster Magistrates Court, where he will appear on Wednesday 30 October.

The charging decision and its timing were a matter for the CPS, a government spokesperson added.

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Flowers and tributes outside the Atkinson Art Centre Southport

It comes after the two candidates for the Conservative leadership raised questions about the new charges.

Robert Jenrick suggested that information was being "concealed" from the public.

“We were told for months that this was not a terror-related incident, and yet we have learnt that this individual, the suspect, was allegedly reading al-Qaeda manuals and had access to dangerous substances like ricin," he said.

"Given the scale of public interest, I think it is an important question to be asked, why was this information not put into the public domain sooner? So I’m asking the public authorities and the prime minister, what did they know, when did they learn it, and why was the decision taken not to be more honest and transparent with the public."

Meanwhile Kemi Badenoch has suggested there are "serious questions to be asked of the police, the CPS and also of Keir Starmer’s response".

She has not elaborated on what those questions are, suggesting they should be asked in Parliament.

The police said it is "certainly not the case" that they have been keeping things from the public. It would be highly unusual for them to release details of a live police investigation.

The CPS said it has taken time to bring the charges because this was a "lengthy and complex investigation".

It is also important to be clear that the Southport attacks are not being treated as a terrorist incident.

Possessing a document that could be useful in preparing an act of terrorism is an entirely separate offence.

To be labelled as terrorism, the attack would have to be an attempt to advance a political, religious, racial or ideological cause. But it is not clear what possible motivation there might have been.

Authorities are urging people not to speculate, as it could jeopardise the entire court case.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "These additional charges will undoubtedly be distressing for people in Southport.

"The most important thing is to get justice for Bebe, Alice and Elsie and their heartbroken families, and all those affected by the attack, and nobody should put that at risk.

"The police and prosecutors have an important job to do in their investigation, pursuing every avenue and taking the action they need to ahead of the trial.

"We must support them and ensure that everything possible is done to deliver justice."

👏👏👏 And as some on here don't understand.

Pop here more often.

How do you know he is an Islamic extremist?

Okay, I'll rephrase that.

We don't yet know that for sure.