A yoga teacher who was stabbed five times in the devastating Southport attack has opened up about the moment she believed she and the children in her care ‘were all going to die’ at the hands of their attacker.
On July 29, 2024, then 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana entered the Hart Space dance studio in Southport, Merseyside, where he proceeded to kill three children and injure ten others.
The ‘ferocious’ knife attack took place during a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga event overseen by Leanne Lucas and her friend Heidi Liddle.
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The event, which was aimed at kids between the ages of six and 11, was staged just days after the ‘Bad Blood’ hitmaker performed three sold-out nights at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the attack, Lucas explained that she’d initially seen the attacker through the window of the Hart Street studio.
18-year-old Rudakubana - who has now been jailed to serve a minimum of 52 years after pleading guilty to the murders of the three children - Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven - then came into the room and ‘grabbed a child’.
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“I didn’t know what he was doing,” she recounted during BBC Panorama: The Southport Attack.
“He then grabbed the next child and the next child, and then I shout ‘Who is that?’ and then I struggle to get that part of the memory back because he moved from the girls at the table and he moved over to right next to me.
Recalling the moment she was stabbed in the Meols Cop-based dance studio, the yoga teacher said she ‘felt something go in [her] back’, causing her brain to say ‘he’s got me’.
“He got me and then he got me again, but I just knew that if I didn’t get out everyone was going to die,” she continued.
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Lucas suffered five stab wounds during the frenzied attack - in her spine, her head, her ribs, her lung, and her shoulder blade.
Despite her injuries and understanding that Rudakubana was ‘bigger’ than her, the educator understood she needed to ‘get some help’ for the children in her care.
“I called 999 on the landing and asked for the police. I just kept saying ‘There’s children inside’,” she remarked.
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Lucas then said she went into ‘panic mode’ when she realised Rudakubana was chasing them.
"My brain is going 100 miles an hour but my body won't do anything. And there are people asking me questions and I am saying: 'Go and get the children.'
"I just don't know what else I could have done."
She was later told by officials that if it wasn’t for her and fellow dance teacher Heidi Liddle, all the children in her care could have died.
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"The police said we'd all be dead if me and Heidi hadn't done what we'd done and that gives nothing for the children who did die... that doesn't take that away,” she said.
Lucas’ comments are set to air as part of the Southport Attack episode of BBC Panorama.
The 58-minute investigative documentary into the murders committed by Rudakubana is set to air at 8pm this evening (February 24) on BBC One and will see reporter Judith Moritz meeting up with various other survivors of the attack.
The harrowing TV special will also document how local authorities missed warning signs of Rudakubana’s behaviour.
“It's so shocking how much evidence they had on him, how he slipped through the net," remarked Lucas.
You can watch Panorama: The Southport Attack on BBC One tonight at 8pm or stream via BBC iPlayer now.
Ella Scott