Southport attack survivor: 'I hear screams and see the blood in my nightmares'

A heroic girl who was stabbed multiple times as she pushed other children to safety has said she still 'sees the blood and hears the screams' from the Southport attack in her nightmares. The brave youngster said Axel Rudakubana "looked possessed" as she locked eyes with the killer when he began his savage knife attack on a dance class full of children.

The girl, who had attended the Taylor Swift workshop with her little sister said it felt like a 'perfect day', until it turned into a 'living nightmare' in July last year. The girl, who can only be identified as child 6, said: "I was facing the door when [he] came in to the room.

"At first I thought it must be some sort of joke, like this couldn’t actually be happening. But I saw him in his green hoody, with the face mask on and I looked at his eyes. He looked possessed. He didn’t look human.

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"I saw him stab someone in front of me and realised that he was going to hurt us all. Then I saw him coming towards me. It felt like everything slowed down, all I could hear was the screaming. I relive those screams every time I think about what happened.

"He reached me and stabbed me in my arm. I turned to run and he stabbed me in my back. I reached the door and on the landing I screamed for the girls around me to get down the stairs and remember physically pushing them to get them out of the building to get away.

"I just kept thinking 'get them out, get everyone to safety'. When we got to the car park I remember thinking, 'he’s going to keep coming, he’s not going to stop until he has killed us all'. And so we kept running."

The youngster told an inquiry into the atrocity that she suffered a collapsed lung and two broken bones. She added: "That’s how hard he stabbed me." The inquiry had already heard from Child 6's mother that she had two have major surgery, a chest drain and a blood transfusion because she had lost so much blood.

But as she courageously told her story in her own words, the girl revealed the psychological toll the attack has had on her. She said: "I still have nightmares. I see him coming towards me. I see him hurting others. I hear the screams. I see the blood. It plays like a horror film on repeat."

The young girl also demanded that the inquiry gives the victims answers that the criminal trial could not. She said: "This inquiry has to tell us why this happened, it has to give us answers the criminal trial never could. It must find out all of the answers.

"Why wasn’t he stopped? There were multiple occasions where this could’ve been prevented. Why did the agencies involved not speak to each other? How many others are out there like him? This can’t happen again."

Rudakubana, now 19, is serving 52 years behind bars for the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine. The teenager also admitted 10 counts of attempted murder and terror charges relating to Al-Qaeda material and biological toxin ricin found in his bedroom.

The inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall will hear from the families of the three slain little girls on Monday.