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The Southport murderer when aged 17 was able to walk up the stairs unimpeded and into the dance yoga class, via unlocked doors on the ground and first floors. Should either of the doors have been locked or otherwise secured? There was nothing legally binding, and a locked specialist fire door would not necessarily have reduced the attack, the inquiry into the murders has stated.
To recap briefly, the Southport murders of three girls were a result of a knife attack at a childrenโs dance club in the coastal town on July 29, 2004. Others were injured.ย In January 2025 the murderer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a minimum term of 52 years.
Home Secretary in Commons
In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood stated that the Inquiry makes 67 recommendations. She said: “The government is reviewing these and will respond to those which relate to national government this summer.” The inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford is beginning work on a second part of the Inquiry, on ‘identifying and managing the risk posed by violence-fixated individuals’, ‘and will present his final recommendations next spring’.
‘Warning signs’
The report by Sir Adrian Fulford found ‘so many warning signs’ of the murderer’s capacity for fatal violence. In other words, a failure ‘at an organisational and individual level โ to stand up and accept responsibility for managing the risk’ that the murderer posed. The report told of agencies’ ‘merry-go-round of referrals, assessments, case-closures and โhand-offsโ’, passing the risk to others. As information sharing was often poor, opportunities to intervene were lost.
As for why the murderer did his crimes, the inquiry report stated that police searched for and were unable to find any evidence of him โhaving pursued an ideological cause, whether political, religious or racialโ. The murderer had a โpreoccupation with extreme violenceโ that โwent beyond mere internet researchโ. His โlongstanding preoccupation with attacking a pupil at his former schoolโ, and โrepeated statements that he intended to use a knife to attack othersโ added up to โan entrenched fixationโ. Among many aspects covered by the inquiry were the murdererโs purchase online of knives. Also covered were โPrevent Referralsโ, whereby the murderer was passed to the authorities; and โa failure of parental controlโ, partly around the murdererโs plan, one week before his crimes, to attack a local school.
Doors
The main door from the car park to the communal stairwell had a conventional mortice type lock. The doors into the upstairs studio could be locked with a key. But for the leaseholder or event organiser to have locked these doors would have been wholly inappropriate while the building was occupied; indeed, unlawful as a fire exit. Could an alternative, โspecialistโ fire door have been fitted in place of the communal ground floor door, or upstairs โ a โphysical push bar allowing easy exit, and doors with a magnetic lock which can be released typically via a green button but unlock in the event of the fire alarm soundingโ? The inquiry did not find specific legal duty as to the standard of security of entrances for such community events. The report pointed to Department for Education safeguarding guidance of 2023 about after-school clubs; which said nothing about whether entrance doors to venues ought to be lockable specialist fire doors or be covered by video door entry. The inquiry found that the lack of such specific guidance from the Department for Education was deliberate; among the inquiryโs recommendations was for the DfE to review such guidance around โappropriate entrance and exit security measuresโ.
The inquiry report noted that the outside door to the communal staircase through which the murderer entered was unlocked, โas were the wooden doors on the upstairs landing that were the entrance to the upstairs studioโ. The inquiry turned to fire safety, given that โleaseholders and hirers of a venue cannot be expected to lock doors if to do so is in breach of their legal duties in terms of fire safetyโ. A responsible person must carry out a risk assessment.
Although the taxi driver who took the murderer to what turned out to be the murder scene didnโt pay his ยฃ9.70 fare, and the driver would have heard โsome of the girls fleeing screaming in panicโ, he did not ring 999 until โsome 50 minutes after the first cries of distressโ. The inquiry found โno actual detrimentโ caused by the driverโs delay.
Response
As for Merseyside Police response after the first 999 call within a minute of the crime, two minutes later a chief inspector who was one of the forceโs on-duty incident managers directed โthat armed officers were to make their way to the sceneโ and that meanwhile unarmed officers โwere to approach with cautionโ. As the inquiry report noted, this โreflected learning from the Manchester Arena Inquiry which had been briefed extensively to Force Incident Managersโ. It meant that the first police officers arrived on scene slightly inside the forceโs policy of a ten-minute response time to emergency calls. An initial instruction to unarmed officers had been to go to Southport police station, โaround five minutes from the sceneโ. Meanwhile Northย West Ambulance Service (NWAS) had told two crews to โstand offโ; that is, as the inquiry report put it, โto deploy to the scene but stop a safe distance from the final destination in the interests of safetyโ. Unarmed police detained a suspect. The inquiry report stated that the police incident manager made the โcorrect decisionโ not to declare Operation Plato, โtheย response to a marauding terrorist attackโ, whereby 999 responders might โstand offโ โ an ambulance would proceed towards the scene using blue lights and sirens but stop – until a scene was declared safe, โdelaying treatment and resources going to the sceneโ. That Merseyside had two Force Incident Managers on duty at all times was adopted by Merseyside after โthe Kerslake Report into the Manchester Arena Bombing, which came ahead of the public inquiry into the same event chaired by Sirย John Saundersโ.
Timings
As for timings, the first 999 call was received by Merseyside Police at 11.47; the first police officer to arrive on scene was at 11.56am; and armed response vehicles arrived at the scene, 34 Hart Street, Southport, โat or shortly before 12:15โ when the perpetrator was in custody. Armed police, โtrained to a higher level of first aid than unarmed police officers, began to assist in first aidโ. The report described the police response as a whole as well-managed that displayed โeffective interโagency liaison and communicationโ, while the NWAS response time was โappropriateโ. The report noted that NWAS โdoes not have the capacity or the funding to allow all levels of staff to participate in exercisesโ; although โsuch exercising was a recommendation of the Manchester Arena Inquiryโ (pictured).
Background
As police gathered intelligence, it transpired that included a โhistory from 2019 of him logging onto school websites involving school mass shootings and talking about guns and beheadingsโ. The report went over the murderer’s contacts with the authorities beginning in 2019 after he rang Childline and told of having taken a knife to school. The inquiry reported that the murderer bought โricin precursors and chemical equipmentโ in January 2022; and tried to produce ricin. In March 2022, the murderer went missing from home, was found with a knife on a bus, and said to police that he had wanted to stab someone. According to the report, the murderer โwas already on the path to his offending in July 2024โ, due among other things to โstockpilingโ of weapons; and when armed, had gone out on previous occasions to attack others. The parents, the inquiry found, had abandoned responsibility. The inquiry report acknowledged that the murderer โpresented a formidable array of problems for his parentsโ.
Recommendations
Among the recommendations were for โa shared multiโagency riskโassessment toolโ for use across public sector services, in cases of young people โwho present a high risk of serious harmโ. An assessment and diagnosis for the murderer, when he had turned 13, for autism took a year and a half.
