Teen Sentenced in UK Mass Stabbing

A teenager who stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England was sentenced Thursday to more than 50 years in prison for what a judge called "the most extreme, shocking, and exceptionally serious crime." Judge Julian Goose said 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana "wanted to try and carry out mass murder of innocent, happy young girls" and planned to kill as many people as he could. Goose said that he couldn't impose a sentence of life without parole, because Rudakabana was under 18 at the time of the crime. But the judge said he must serve more than 51 years before being considered for parole and "it is likely he will never be released," the AP reports.

• Rudakubana was 17 when he attacked the children in the seaside town of Southport in July. He killed Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. Eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, were wounded, along with teacher Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened.

• The attack shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching. The government has announced a public inquiry into how the system failed to stop the killer, who had been referred to the authorities multiple times over his obsession with violence.
• Rudakubana faced three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder for those he wounded, and additional charges of possessing a knife, the poison ricin, and an al-Qaeda manual. He unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty on all charges on Monday.
• Prosecutor Deanne Heer said Rudakubana had no political or religious cause, but had "a longstanding obsession with violence, killing, genocide." "His only purpose was to kill. And he targeted the youngest and most vulnerable in society," she said. She said two of the dead children "suffered particularly horrific injuries which are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature."
• Lucas, 36, who ran the dance class, said that "the trauma of being both a victim and a witness has been horrendous." "I cannot give myself compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?" she told the court in a victim impact statement.

(More England stories.)