A UK judge on Thursday sentenced a self-confessed child killer to life in custody for brutally murdering three young girls in a stabbing spree last year that sparked the country’s worst riots in over a decade.

“I consider it likely he will never be released,” Judge Julian Goose said, adding that Axel Rudakubana, 18, must serve a minimum of 52 years in detention for his “extreme violence”.

“The harm Rudakubana has caused to each family, each child and to the community has been profound and permanent,” the judge told Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England.

Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty earlier this week to the killings, as well as to 10 counts of attempted murder and possessing a blade, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, northwest England.

He also admitted to the production of a biological toxin, ricin, as well as possessing an Al-Qaeda training manual. His guilty plea on Monday halted his impending trial.

The judge said the violent attack, which Rudakubana unleashed just nine days before his 18th birthday, took just 15 minutes.

“Had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child — all 26 of them,” the judge said.

“He was prevented from murdering more only by the escape of other children.”

After some of the injured girls escaped, Rudakubana “returned to continue his sustained and brutal violence against two of the youngest of those children, stabbing them multiple times”, the judge added.

Rudakubana’s multiple appearances in court to date have been marked by his uncooperative behaviour, with the defendant repeatedly refusing to speak and declining to stand in court on Monday, where he muttered “guilty” to each of the charges.

The teenager’s rampage last July shocked the UK, triggering anti-immigrant riots in more than a dozen English and Northern Irish towns and cities, amid viral misinformation that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible.

Rudakubana was in fact born in Cardiff to parents of Rwandan origin and lived in Banks, a village northeast of Southport.

His Christian church-going parents, both ethnic Tutsis, came to Britain in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to UK media.

The attack has not been treated as a terror incident and he was never charged with terrorism offences — prompting criticism from some.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed on Tuesday to update terror legislation “if the law needs to change”, to recognise what he called the new threat of individuals intent on “extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake”.

Meanwhile, interior minister Yvette Cooper announced a public inquiry would probe how police, courts and welfare services “failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed”.

Failures

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed in the attack in the seaside resort near Liverpool on July 29, 2024.

Ten others were wounded, including eight children, in one of the country’s worst mass stabbings in decades.

The unrest linked to the killings lasted nearly a week.

Rioters attacked police, shops and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as mosques, with hundreds arrested and charged at the time and over the subsequent months.

Authorities blamed far-right agitators for fuelling the violence, including by sharing misinformation about the attacker.

Following Monday’s guilty plea and the lifting of court reporting restrictions, new information emerged about Rudakubana.

He had been referred three times to the government’s nationwide anti-extremism scheme, Prevent, over concerns about his obsession with violence.

Prevent aims to “stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism” or help rehabilitate those already involved in terror, according to the interior ministry.

He had also been excluded from school, with reports suggesting that when he was 13 he was bullied and started carrying a knife.

Social workers reportedly required a police escort when visiting him at the family home because of the perceived threat he posed.

Reports also said authorities had long known of his interest in atrocities and mass murders after he was found doing research on a school computer.

Starmer branded the apparent decision that Rudakubana did not meet the threshold for intervention by Prevent as “clearly wrong”.

Meanwhile, Cooper has pledged stronger measures to tackle knife sales online, calling it “a total disgrace” that Rudakubana was able to buy one from Amazon despite being 17 and having a conviction.