“Communities like mine will have to pick up the pieces and that’s what we’ll do here”
A journalist from Southport has described waiting in fear for news of what had happened in his home town on the day three little girls were stabbed to death.
He wrote: “I was born and raised in the town and on Monday spent hours waiting in fear for official news to come through. The WhatsApp groups and Facebook comments were filled with terrifying stories of what may have happened and just how many people were affected.
“Most of those suggestions had lots of details wrong but ultimately the key point remained true — children and adults had been stabbed by a lone attacker who’d embarked on a spree of unimaginable terror.
“I filled those few hours with conversations asking friends and family if one other was OK, whether they were in the affected area, and if all their loved ones were safe. When the official news came through, the heartbreak and devastation were cataclysmic.”
Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar died after being stabbed at the Hart Space centre off Hart Street, where they were attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance session in their school holidays.
Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, is charged with three counts of murder, and also charged with 10 counts of attempted murder after eight other children and two adults were seriously injured in the attack on Monday. The teenager lived in Banks, a village in Lancashire, having been born in Cardiff.
Jamie added: “For a town like Southport, this kind of incident is unheard of. Realistically, that’s also the case across almost anywhere in Lancashire or the vast majority of the country.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen here” we say. Yet it absolutely had and the consequences were worse than anyone could have imagined.
“Like so many others, I hugged my children extra tight that night amid a combination of relief they weren’t affected and sorrow for those who were. Southport is a small town in many ways and you’re usually only a connection or two away from anyone else so you can’t help but wonder if you know those involved.”
On Tuesday, Jamie attended a peaceful vigil in Southport. Hours later, a riot ripped through the area as protestors sought to use events the previous day to pursue anti-immigrant agendas.
Jamie added: “I watched in horror as black smoke filled the air from a police van which had been set on fire. I watched in disgust as cowards whose only strength came in their numbers kicked down walls and used the bricks to throw at the police.
“Did these people who were supposedly so angry about attacks on children stop to consider the impact of their actions on all the children in the areas around them?
“Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking what happened last night was an act of revenge against what happened on Monday. It was an opportunistic and calculated effort to use the deaths of children to feed an agenda which existed long before that impossibly evil act.”
