A UK public inquiry has concluded that the July 2024 knife attack in Southport (a seaside town in northwest England) that killed three young girls — Bebe King, 6, Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7 — and wounded 10 others was entirely preventable, blaming "catastrophic" failures by multiple state agencies and the "irresponsible and harmful" conduct of the attacker's parents. Inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford found that Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 when he carried out the assault on a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club before being jailed for life, had been flagged repeatedly to schools, police, health services, and the Prevent counter-terrorism programme over nearly five years, yet agencies passed responsibility between themselves in what Fulford called an "inappropriate merry-go-round" rather than taking ownership of the escalating threat. The 260-page report calls for a new dedicated agency to manage complex young offenders and warns that Britain's existing multi-agency safeguarding model "completely failed," with Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledging the government will act on its recommendations.