The taxi driver who gave a lift to teen killer Axel Rudakubana before he attacked children with a kitchen knife has had his licence stripped.
Gary Poland waited for almost an hour after unwittingly driving Rudakubana to the Hart Space studio on July 29, 2024, where the 17-year-old stabbed 13 people at the Taylor Swift theme party.
Footage captured on his dashboard camera was played at a public inquiry into the massacre, showing him drive away while screaming children ran for their lives from the building.
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed in the attack, and eight other children and two adults were seriously hurt.
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The inquiry found that the murders of the three girls ‘could and should have been prevented’ if multiple agencies had taken steps to stop the killer, who was known to the mental health, social care and counter-extremism bodies before the attack.
Rudakubana had left the taxi without paying after calling a lift under a fake name.
The driver had followed the teenager and told him he needed to pay, but Rudakubana ignored him.
It heard how private hire driver Poland took away from the scene despite seeing children escape the building because he heard ‘four or five gunshots.’
This led him to believe there had been a shooting, he told the inquiry via a video link.
Poland told the hearing he saw six and seven-year-old children ‘stampede for their lives’ within 30 seconds of the beginning of the attack.
But he drove off, called a friend and collected another passenger before speaking with his wife. He eventually called 999 when arriving home.
He told the inquiry he had gone into ‘panic mode’ thinking there was a shooting.
He told in a statement: ‘I regret not helping the children, their screams were harrowing and I can still hear them when I think back to that day.’
Sefton Council’s taxi licence conditions state: ‘If, of course, you feel a child or young person is in serious danger of immediate harm, you should call the emergency police telephone number, 999.’
The council revoked Poland’s licence because he ‘did not meet the appropriate standards.’
All taxi licensing hearings are held in private, and the council said the exact reason for the revocation is not made public.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said today that the government accepts the recommendations made by the first phase of the inquiry in full.
Inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford said there was a ‘fundamental failure’ by any organisation, or multi-agency arrangement, to take ownership of the risk Rudakubana posed in the years leading up to his attack.
‘These devastating failures led to the senseless killing of three young girls and violent attacks on others. My thoughts today are first and foremost with the families and friends of Bebe, Elsie and Alice and all the victims of that awful day. We owe it to them to right these wrongs,’ the Home Secretary said.
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