'I lived next to Axel Rudakubana - one thing he did was very weird'

A woman who used to live next to child killer Axel Rudakubana has revealed how she thought the teenager was 'a bit weird'. Rudakubana was told on Thursday he will have to spend a minimum of 52 years behind bars for the horrific crimes he carried out in Southport.

He murdered Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, while also attempting to kill 10 others. Rudakubana travelled from his home in Old School Close, West Lancashire, before making the four-mile journey to a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Hart Street, in Southport.

The small, unassuming cul-de-sac where he lived with his family quickly became the centre of the police investigation. Armed police swooped on the family home within two hours of his horrific knife attack on July 29 last year.

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Caroline lived next door to the Rudakubana family but has since moved away from the area, Liverpool Echo reports. She told how she thought the now 18-year-old killer was 'weird' but just a 'normal, moody teenager'.

She said: "To us, it was just a family living next door who kept themselves to themselves, I thought the teenage son was a bit weird, like he just stared at you and didn't really say anything at all.

"I just put that down to him being a teenager but he did used to stare. He'd stare at me like he was staring right through me. I just thought he was a normal, moody teenager.

"The family themselves seemed normal, the mum used to always forget to put the handbrake on and I would knock on and say "your car’s rolled down again, you need to move it" and she would say "no, no, I’ll get my husband to do it".

"[The dad] would enter into a bit more conversation but it was just general chit chat. We had no problems living next to them, it was just a family getting on and kept themselves to themselves."

Rudakubana travelled from his home at about 11.30am, donning a green jumper, black tracksuit pants and a surgical mask. He went to a small business estate, off Hart Street.

Armed police rushed to the village and arrived at his home at 1.29pm - after he was detained at the scene of his crime. Police also stormed the properties surrounding the two-bedroom semi-detached house he lived in with his parents and older brother.

One woman said the local Co-Op and Post Office were 'locked down' as police secured the scene. Caroline was working from home on the day of the attack.

An armed police officer pointing a rifle towards the doorway of her open backdoor told her to get in the house and shut the door. Merseyside Police shutdown the road in the days that followed, with a cordon lasting weeks.

Caroline said that in the weeks that followed, neighbours heard people going past the cordon shouting threats. It led to fire safety checks being carried out on houses in case Rudakubana's home was targeted.

She said: "The fact that I’ve moved out the area means I feel so much more relieved and settled because even though the events of the day don’t affect me, they kind of did because of what’s gone on next door. We were constantly questioned by police, constantly having police there, constantly having people coming down making threats.

"My son didn’t want to live here so he lived with his grandma for months. I had to deal with the trauma of having a gun pointed in my face when police first came to the close, that’s upsetting, and then finding out there were chemicals next door, I don’t want to have that anymore. They’re not the memories I want to remember, I don’t want that."

She went on to say: "It's not Old School Close anymore, it's the forgotten close. No crime was committed there but our lives were turned upside down."

Debs Walmsley, of Deb’z Deli which is just yards from the entrance to Old School Close, said the community immediately came together in the aftermath of the attack. She said: "We had a lot of customers put money in a pot for the police officers who were standing in the sun all day on the street.

"We didn’t ask people to do it, people wanted to do it. Some people were putting in £10 or £20 at a time to go towards food for the officers. Every morning we would take them some food and when they came to get a drink or some food, it was already paid for."

She added: "We are a decent community, we care about each other." Children’s summer classes and events were cancelled in the village in the aftermath of the attack.

Annie Ives, trustee of The Hub, a local community centre, said: "It was very emotional, I know how close this village is and I know people want to support what’s going on in the village. For Banks to have that negative connotation to it, this quiet, sleepy, rural village, just a couple of miles from Southport, it’s sad.

"To think [the attack] is going to tarnish the name of Banks, that’s what people are upset about when that’s not the case at all, it’s a very close village with people wanting to help each other." Annie added: "One thing that has also been apparent is that the family were just unknown, which is very unusual because apparently they’ve lived here for seven years.

"Nobody knows anything about them and I have friends who live across from the close and they’ve never even seen them. It’s very unusual." Resident and local councillor Thomas de Freitas, who lives just five minutes from Rudakubana's family home, said: "It’s so strange, no one around the village really saw them or knew them.

"No one I have spoken to knew the family. Some people told me they saw the family around now and then but no one has said they knew them, it’s odd." He added: "It’s been a difficult time for everyone in the village.

"Before this, it was just a little-known village just north of Southport. Our village’s name is now linked with all this terrible stuff. Residents at the time were struggling with all sorts of things.

"People living in the cordon were worried, they didn’t know what was going on, even things like not being able to get their bins emptied because of the cordon being in place. We quickly held a community meeting with the people in the village where we spoke to them about their worries and gave them the updates we could give them at the time."

Rudakubana's family remain in hiding, being forced to leave the village following his crimes.