A public inquiry into the July 2024 Southport knife attack has released its phase-one findings, examining how state agencies interacted with perpetrator Axel Rudakubana in the years before the atrocity. Rudakubana, then 17, killed three girls — Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7 — and wounded several others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in the town of Southport, northwest England. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged the government would act on the inquiry's recommendations, while survivors' lawyers warned the process must not become "another navel-gazing exercise" and called for a formal mechanism to monitor whether recommended reforms are actually implemented.