Southport Archives - Occasional Digest

SHOW BIZ

Southport stabbing victim’s harrowing five-word message to Axel Rudakubana

A 14-year-old survivor of the horrifying Southport stabbings has read out her victim statement in a chilling Channel 4 documentary on based on the devastating event

23:41, 24 Jul 2025Updated 23:42, 24 Jul 2025

Southport teen’s harrowing five-word message to murderer in victim statement(Image: PA)

Channel 4 viewers were left with tears streaming down their faces after the chilling and poignant victim statement from a survivor of the Southport stabbings was aired in the new documentary titled One Day In Southport.

One Day in Southport delivered a harrowing account of the July 29, 2024, tragedy that unfolded during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at Southport’s Hart Space. Seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana stormed the venue, stabbing three girls, Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7), and Alice da Silva Aguiar (9), to death and injuring ten others, most of them children.

Rudakubana was arrested immediately and later admitted guilt before he received a life sentence with a minimum term of 52 years. The film centres on one teenage survivor’s experience, blending first-hand accounts from victims, witnesses, and locals to explore how the violence, conspiracy, and extremism made an already devastating incident even more so in the aftermath.

Rudakubana moments before he stabbed the three young girls to death(Image: PA)

In the days that followed, baseless rumours falsely naming the attacker as a Muslim asylum seeker spread rapidly across social media. Fueled by the misinformation, riots erupted in multiple towns and cities across the UK as immigrants were left fearing for their lives.

Middlesbrough saw one of the worst incidents on August 4, when a planned protest exploded into chaos. Over 1,000 people descended on the area, smashing windows, torching cars, and attacking homes. The documentary resonated deeply with viewers, many describing it online as “devastating,” “urgent,” and “impossible to forget.” When

One particularly heartbreaking scene saw the focus survivor of the attack read aloud her victim statement after she addressed Rudakubana in court after the harrowing stabbings. In an incredibly powerful statement, the 14-year-old survivor wrote: “We think you’re a coward.”

The brave young girl went said: “Physically I’ve healed but my scars remain as a reminder of what you did to me, to us all. My sister and I are lucky we got to come home. Your actions mean that Alice, Bebe and Elsie didn’t.

The teen survivor shared her powerful victim statement(Image: Channel 4/One Day In Southport)

“No sane person could do that, it’s sickening what you did, going in there knowing you’re going into a room full of defenceless children. Give me a reason for what you did. Arming yourself with a weapon and stabbing children. I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing that we think you’re a coward.”

Earlier in the documentary, the teenager broke down in tears after she blamed herself for not being able to save the three little girls – one of whom was her little sister’s best friend.

The teenage survivor, only identified by her eyes, told the story from her memory as she detailed how she was stabbed both in the arm and in the back.

“I felt like I was dying,” the survivor shared in the heartbreaking admission. She then broke down after confessing that she blames herself for not being able to save the girls – despite having been stabbed herself.

The three children were stabbed to death(Image: PA)

“I regret it every day that I wasn’t able to save her. That I wasn’t able to get her out,” she sobbed. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, after watching the chilling stories of the victims unfold, viewers shared their heartbreak. “This poor girl has to live with this trauma for the rest of her life. It’s so sad that she blames herself even in the slightest. Absolutely devastating.”

“What a brave young lady. Her parents and her sister should be so proud of her. What an incredible victim statement,” someone else wrote.

“I am truly sick to my stomach watching this. How did this happen to such innocent little babies? Bawling my eyes out and thinking of their poor families,” another viewer shared. Another echoed: “God, this is such a hard watch, but so important too.”

Another Channel 4 viewer typed: “Those poor little girls must have been terrified. To think they had their whole lives ahead of them. Such a powerful documentary. Fair play to Channel 4.”

Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads.

Source link

SHOW BIZ

Southport teen sobs as she ‘blames herself’ for not being able to save stabbing victims

Jul 24, 2025 News Desk

One Day in Southport detailed one teenage survivor from the horrifying Southport stabbings in July 2024 which saw three young girls stabbed at a Taylor Swift themed dance party

An individual who was injured in the Southport stabbing sobbed as she recalled the terrifying ordeal(Image: Channel 4/One Day In Southport)

Channel 4’s One Day in Southport aired tonight, leaving viewers shaken by its unflinching portrayal of the tragic events of July 29, 2024. The documentary revisits the devastating day a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at Hart Space in Southport was turned into a crime scene when 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana launched a brutal knife attack.

The film follows the story of one young survivor and her family, using raw testimony from victims, witnesses, and community members to discuss how violence, disinformation, and extremism collided.

Rudakubana fatally stabbed three young girls called Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7), and Alice da Silva Aguiar (9), and injured ten others, most of them being children.

He was arrested at the scene, later pleaded guilty, and received a life sentence with a minimum of 52 years.

Elsie Dot Stancombe was just seven when she was murdered (Image: AP)

False claims that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker spread rapidly online, fuelling a wave of riots across the UK. One of the most violent incidents occurred in Middlesbrough on August 4, when a planned protest spiralled into destruction.

More than 1,000 people gathered as shopfronts were smashed, homes vandalised, and cars torched.

The documentary struck a chord with viewers, with many taking to social media to describe it as “devastating,” “urgent,” and “impossible to forget.”

One particularly heartbreaking scene saw the focus survivor of the attack break down in tears after she blamed herself for not being able to save the three little girls – one of whom was her little sister’s best friend. The teenage survivor, only identified by her eyes, told the story from her memory as she detailed how she was stabbed both in the arm and in the back.

The teen broke down in tears(Image: Channel 4/One Day In Southport)

“I regret it every day that I wasn’t able to save her. That I wasn’t able to get her out,” she sobbed.

Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, after watching the chilling stories of the victims unfold, viewers shared their heartbreak. “This poor girl has to live with this trauma for the rest of her life. It’s so sad that she blames herself even in the slightest. Absolutely devastating.”

The teen sobbed after her little sister’s best friend was stabbed(Image: Channel 4/One Day In Southport)

Another Channel 4 viewer typed: “Those poor little girls must have been terrified. To think they had their whole lives ahead of them. Such a powerful documentary. Fair play to Channel 4.”

“So heartbroken watching this. Tears streaming down to the ground omg,” someone else shared. While another viewer voiced: “It just shows how unsafe the UK has become. Nobody is safe. Not even innocent little girls.”

Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Source link

SHOW BIZ

‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ review: Jennifer Love Hewitt is back

Jul 20, 2025 News Desk

“It’s 1997 all over again. Isn’t that nostalgic?” Freddie Prinze Jr. says to fellow millennial heartthrob Jennifer Love Hewitt in this fittingly silly resurrection of the B-movie slasher franchise “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” In the ’90s original, based on the young adult novel of the same name by Lois Duncan, Prinze and Hewitt played Ray and Julie, the sole survivors of a teen clique that accidentally runs over a stranger, conceals the crime and then, one year later, needs to flee a hook-wielding avenger over the Fourth of July weekend. Having endured that escapade and a sequel that chased them to the Bahamas, the duo is back for this mildly meta installment to mentor a new generation of manslaughterers. A mysterious raincoat-clad killer has a point when a message in blood is smeared: You can’t evade the past.

The five youngsters fleeing the inevitable are sensible Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and her bland ex-boyfriend Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), daffy blond Danica (Madelyn Cline) and her rich fiancé Teddy (Tyriq Withers) and hard luck Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), who just got out of rehab. Slightly older than their forebearers were during their misadventure, they’re all in their early 20s and launching their adult lives when they repeat the same deadly mistake on the same night, on the same stretch of coastal road in Southport, North Carolina. Danica groans, “It’s called Reaper’s Curve for a reason.”

Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s perky update has a few things going for it, including low expectations. Co-written with former journalist Sam Lansky, this horror throwback just wants to get some giggles at the mall, even cracking a joke about Nicole Kidman’s beloved AMC ad. Robinson, who created MTV’s “Sweet/Vicious” and has helped shepherd a handful of other fluffy amusements, is a promising popcorn wit, deftly ensuring the tone is neither too sober nor too snide. You don’t feel that guilty gobbling her empty calories.

Robinson seems to respect the first film as though she was adapting Proust. Perhaps to people of a certain age who grew up watching it on VHS at slumber parties, it is their madeleine. The script works in as many callbacks as possible: spooky mannequins under plastic sheeting, tacky parade floats with giant fiberglass clams, Hewitt hollering her memorable line: “What are you waiting for?” (And there’s a big cameo that deserves to be a surprise.) The gags feel klutzier when they aim for 21st century humor — say, Hewitt sipping tea from a mug that reads “tears of the patriarchy.”

This latest cast was all born around the time of the ’90s massacre and are oblivious to the murder spree yet to come. Callow Teddy even makes fun of the name on one of the dead kids’ graves: “Barry Cox,” he snorts. Powerful land developers like Teddy’s dad (Billy Campbell) also buried information about the previous attacks. The forces of real estate and the local police department have invested heavily in transforming this blue-collar fishing hamlet into a tony beach resort. Even before bodies get strung up on the pier like sharks, you’re thinking that the writers must have also dug out their VHS tapes of “Jaws.”

Pragmatic, good-hearted Ava is the film’s moral center, the one disgusted enough to realize that she, her friends and Southport’s leadership are all cretins. Chase Sui Wonders has been strong in everything I’ve seen her in — I’m watching her career with curiosity — even if here, she mostly expresses her foul mood by changing her wardrobe from slime green to black. Ava’s ex Milo seems like a role that should amount to more than it does. All there is to know about him is that he’s alleged to work in politics and he and Ava have zero heat.

But we come to love Ava’s BFF Danica, who prances into obvious death traps wearing flimsy silver mules. She’s a walking cupcake — in this genre, a disposable-seeming treat — yet the way Madelyn Cline plays her is fabulous. This bohemian is as shallow as they come, fretting that the stress is giving her alopecia and suggesting her professional empath for guidance. (Danica also has a life coach, an energy healer and a psychic.) With her soft cheeks and tearful, raspy baby voice, it’s shocking how much we get attached to her. Gratefully, Robinson clearly loves her characters too and makes their screen time count rather than treating them like grindhouse fodder, that kind of violent vaudeville where you can’t wait for the hook to drag someone off screaming.

The film’s strongest move is that it encourages us to like (and laugh at) our victims. Nearly all of them — Milo excepted — are interesting, especially a true crime podcaster named Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel, a scenery-chewing delight) who calls Southport’s cover-up a case of “gentrifi-slay-tion.” When this ghoulish fangirl escorts Ava to a historic murder scene and starts to unbutton her top, you’re convinced that she finds all this bloodshed a turn-on. Another target, played by a fratty Joshua Orpin, tries to bribe the killer with crypto.

Let’s be frank: None of these characters, past or present, would have grown up to be rocket scientists. The original got through its gore scenes with grim brutishness, like it was embarrassed that they had to be done. Written by Kevin Williamson, the talent behind the clever slasher “Scream” and the earnest romance “Dawson’s Creek,” it couldn’t quite capture the best elements of both. Robinson has more fun playing executioner. Each death is given a satisfying buildup; she’s a skilled hook-tease. One muscular kid who’s been pumping up to defend himself lets out an excited war whoop when it’s finally time to fight for his life.

The score, camerawork and editing are simply fine. They’re not trying to pull focus from the dialogue, which is genuinely funny. (My favorite design choice was the clodding sound of the killer’s boots when they come tromping in for the coup de grâce.) But the plotting barely keeps pace. Characters wander away for bizarre stretches of time. Just when I thought things were losing steam, someone got menaced in an actual steam room.

Robinson is more interested in pranking us with psych-outs than sinister scares. She’s under palpable pressure to execute a twist, so several scenes feel like a magician flipping over the wrong card to distract you from the right one tucked in their sleeve. You don’t quite buy the big reveal. Yet quibbling would seem as tweedy as arguing that the film is peddling both nostalgia and anemoia — a longing for an era one never knew firsthand. This recycled trash is no treasure, but I’m betting the majority of this redo’s audience will be young enough to find ’90s-style schlock adorably quaint.

‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’

Rated: R, for bloody horror violence, language throughout, some sexual content and brief drug use

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Playing: In wide release Friday, July 18

Source link

NEWS TODAY

Southport survivor ‘fought like hell’ says mum

Jul 9, 2025 News Desk

Jonny Humphries

BBC News

Reporting fromLiverpool Town Hall

Judith Moritz

Special correspondent

PA Media

The Southport Inquiry has been hearing from the families of survivors

A girl who suffered devastating injuries in the Southport attacks “fought like hell” to escape and save other children, her mother tearfully told a public inquiry.

The Southport Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall heard statements from the families of four girls who survived despite being severely injured during the attacks on 29 July 2024.

One of those girls, referred to as C1 to protect her anonymity, was a seven-year-old described by her mother as “our little hippie” who had “loved adventure” before the events of last summer.

However she “does not live that way anymore” her mother said, as she describes how the courage her daughter had shown left “me crushed but in complete awe”.

C1 was stabbed 33 times by Axel Rudakubana at the dance workshop in Southport’s Hart Street and was airlifted to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Her mother said she had become known as “the girl who was dragged back in”, after CCTV footage shown in court captured the moment C1, already wounded, had tried to escape the dance studio building.

PA Media

Hundreds of people blew bubbles into the air outside the Town Hall in Southport during a vigil last year

It showed Rudakubana grabbing her and pulling her backwards into the building to inflict more damage before she escaped, eventually collapsing on the street.

A hushed chamber in the town hall building heard that C1’s injuries were “vast” and covered “so much of her body and organs”.

Her mother said: “The damage was catastrophic. The hours and days that followed the attack were a living hell.”

C1’s mother said the “most painful of truths” about the attacks carried out by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana was that there were no adults to help her.

The inquiry heard how her daughter had shielded other children as they were attacked and screamed at them to run.

She said that she did not doubt “for one moment” that the actions of the teachers in the class, Leanne Lucas and Heidi Liddle, helped saved lives when they encouraged children to flee.

However she added: “The uncomfortable and often unspoken truth of our own reality is that, when the adults left in those first moments, our daughter had to save herself.

“It is these untold stories of remarkable strength and bravery that are missing when we have heard other accounts of this day.

“I think it is vitally important that those girls are now heard, so that the inquiry can understand the complexities of this experience for everyone.”

Family handouts

Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Aguiar and were murdered in the attack on 29 July 2024

She added: “That reality is painful – our children fought alone, they shielded each other, comforted each other, and helped each other and that must be remembered.”

The inquiry also heard from the father of C3, a nine-year-old girl who was also critically injured that day.

He told the inquiry his daughter was: “Stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see.”

“She bears the scars, both physically and emotionally, of that terrible day,” he said.

“We know that she is only a small way down the path that life will take her, and that obstacles will continue to present themselves along the way.”

Another statement, read by Nicola Ryan-Donnelly, solicitor to the parents of surviving girls, said a “creative” and “full-of-life” seven-year-old remembers the attack “vividly” including how Rudakubana “tried to get her face”.

“Where she was once an independent and joyful child she now needs constant support, reassurance and protection”, her mother had written.

The inquiry has adjourned until 8 September and is expected to hear evidence about the circumstances of the attack and Rudakubana’s contact with various agencies in the months and years before it.

The second phase, expected to start next year, will look at wider issues around how young people become drawn into “extreme violence”.

Source link

Southport stabbing victim’s harrowing five-word message to Axel Rudakubana

A 14-year-old survivor of the horrifying Southport stabbings has read out her victim statement in a chilling Channel 4 documentary on based on the devastating event

Southport teen sobs as she ‘blames herself’ for not being able to save stabbing victims

One Day in Southport detailed one teenage survivor from the horrifying Southport stabbings in July 2024 which saw three young girls stabbed at a Taylor Swift themed dance party

‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ review: Jennifer Love Hewitt is back

Southport survivor ‘fought like hell’ says mum

You missed

Notre Dame beats Laguna Beach in Division 3 playoff opener

Orbán seeks to revive Trump-Putin summit in White House visit

Woman critical after ‘unprovoked attack’

Big Brother star breaks huge record with eviction live on air as fans make same complaint

Occasional Digest