![\"Axel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/3_Axel-Rudakubana-aged-18-from-Banks-in-Lancashire-has-pleaded-guilty-to-16-criminal-charges-includ..jpeg\")
Axel Rudakubana.(Image: Merseyside Police)<\/p>\nSix days before the attack, Rudakubana’s risk to others was said to be “none”Axel Rudakubana.(Image: Merseyside Police)<\/p>\n
A psychiatrist who believed the Southport<\/a> attacker’s risk to others was “minimal” had not read information about his past interest in the Manchester Arena bombing<\/a>, a public inquiry has heard.<\/p>\n Dr Anthony Molyneux, who was consultant psychiatrist for Axel Rudakubana from July 2022, told the Southport Inquiry he was aware the teenager had taken a knife into school, but claims he did not know about an incident where he attacked a pupil with a hockey stick.<\/p>\n Dr Molyneux had missed several references to Rudakubanu’s previous violent incidents in his patient record.<\/p>\n He was also unaware of his patient looking up matters relating to the Manchester Arena<\/a> and London<\/a> Bridge bombings, making remarks about stabbing people or that he had gone missing and been found on a bus with a knife.<\/p>\n Giving evidence at Liverpool<\/a> Town Hall on Monday, he said it would have been “impossible” to review Rudakubana’s complete patient record and said instead he would have read an assessment letter.<\/p>\n He added: “What strikes me as different from pretty much every other case I\u2019ve ever come across within my professional career was I would have expected that information to be at the foreground in what the family told me.”<\/p>\n Dr Molyneux, who works for the Alder Hey Child and Adolescent Mental Health<\/a> Services (CAMHS), said Rudakubana\u2019s parents – Alphonse Rudakubana and Laetitia Muzayire – carried out a “studied manipulation” of his presentation at a level he had never experienced before.<\/p>\n He told the inquiry: “There would appear to be repeated occurrences of the family appearing to, shall we say, stage manage the presentation of information provided to professionals.”<\/p>\n Asked if his assessment Rudakubana\u2019s risk would have been “deeply flawed” without knowledge of the previous incidents, he said: “Let\u2019s just say it would have a significant blind spot.”<\/p>\n He accepted that a standard operating procedure document for Sefton CAMHS stated that clinicians should review the whole electronic patient record at each appointment to ensure they were aware of risk factors.<\/p>\n Dr Molyneux said when he took over psychiatric care of Rudakubana his understanding was that he posed “minimal” risk to others.<\/p>\n When he was discharged from CAMHS on July 23, 2024, the then-17-year-old\u2019s risk to others was said to be “none”, the inquiry heard.<\/p>\n Days later, on July 29, he killed seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, six-year-old Bebe King, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar<\/a>, in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift<\/a>-themed dance class.<\/p>\n Dr Molyneux said Rudakubana presented in appointments as an “unremarkable, sullen, untalkative, gawky teenage boy” and appeared to have a “shopping list” of exactly what medication he wanted.<\/p>\n The inquiry heard two different anti-depressants were prescribed to Rudakubana, but he did not take them regularly.<\/p>\n Dr Molyneux said in a statement he was “100% confident” that his organisation had done everything they could and should have done to assess, treat, support and engage Rudakubana, as well as going “above and beyond”.<\/p>\n Asked about that comment, he said: “No matter how hard anyone and everyone works within these services there are system gaps which can only be remedied I think by having a unified system.”<\/p>\n The inquiry is continuing to hear evidence from mental health staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six days before the attack, Rudakubana’s risk to others was said to be “none”Axel Rudakubana.(Image: Merseyside Police) A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,14214,371,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-515948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-manchester-arena","13":"tag-southport","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115409934896869104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761015740_136_0_Southport-Incident-inquiry.jpg\")
(Image: PA)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761015741_464_0_Southport-Incident-inquiry.jpg\")
(Image: PA)<\/p>\n