SOUTHPORT killer Axel Rudakubana was “always trouble” according to old classmates with new images showing him at a drama class aged 11.
Rudakubana, now 18, was told he will serve life after murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, and trying to kill ten others at a Taylor Swift dance class last July.
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Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana has been given a life sentenceCredit: PA
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Future child killer Axel Rudakubana attending drama class just six years before his murderous rampage in Southport
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He was a shy and awkward boy but it soon took a far darker turn
The cowardly killer was sentenced on Thursday to a minimum of 52 years in prison – the longest for anyone his age.
Yet Rudakubana, in his early school years, had actually been a model pupil who loved to sing and dance before the tide slowly turned.
In new pictures released, taken at the Pauline Quirke Academy – a drama school in Southport in 2017 – Rudakubana is seen reciting lines from a script.
Another image shows him lurking on the edge of the drama group aged 11 as those around him seem enthusiastic and happy.
These chilling photos are now looked back on with horror after he murdered three young girls in cold blood six years later.
His behaviour slowly turned and in 2019 he was expelled from school in Formby, Merseyside, after taking in a knife.
Police were called in and the Year Nine student — then aged just 13 — was sent home, before returning with a hockey stick.
The headmaster intervened before anyone was harmed.
While Rudakubana’s lawyer, Stan Reiz KC, told the court on Thursday: “Something changed in him when he reached the age of 13”, his former peers say there were earlier warning signs.
A former pupil called Jamie, who studied at Range High School in the nearby town of Formby at the same time as Rudakubana told MailOnline: “He was always trouble.”
Jamie added: “Everybody knew him from the get-go [in Year 7]. It was clear and obvious that something was wrong in his brain.
LIVE: Judge sentences Southport child-killer Axel Rudakubana to life
“There were occasions when he had to be held back [by teachers]. He was infamous. People would be scared of him because he was not a good person at all.”
It was when Axel Rudakubana started secondary school in 2017 that things took a darker turn.
A former pupil called Daisy, who sat next to him in English, paints a picture of him as a troublemaker, frequently taking things “too far” and having “shouting matches” with the teacher.
By Year 8, Daisy says, he’d already earned a name for himself; “doing an Axel” became synonymous for misbehaving in lessons.
She also recalled how Rudakubana would have a “dark, ominous” look on his face when the topic of women’s rights came up.
Another student, Rebecca, described him as a “bad egg” who had a reputation for making sexist jokes to the girls.
Rebecca said she, and others, tried their best to “stay away” from Rudakubana.
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Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, was murdered at the dance classCredit: PA
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Bebe King, 6, was among the youngsters stabbed to deathCredit: PA
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Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, was also killedCredit: PA
Current and former pupils at the state secondary have found themselves in the spotlight this week after the disturbing revelation that, just seven days before the Southport murders, Rudakubana had plotted to take a taxi to his old school.
It seems he had a grievance to settle, and was dressed in the same green hoodie and surgical mask he wore to the attack a week later.
The cab was booked for 12.20pm — ten minutes before the 1,100 pupils aged 11-16 were due to break up for summer.
But his martial arts instructor dad came out of the house and remonstrated with Axel, then 17, before sending the driver away from their home in Banks, Lancs.
Mental health experts and social workers tried to help, resulting in an autism diagnosis, but the teenager refused to engage and waded into the cesspit of inhumanity available online.
One tablet device found by cops contained details of ethnic cleansing in Somalia, a history of Nazism and violence in Chechnya.
Shortly before the Southport murders, Rudakubana also searched on X for videos of an April 2024 stabbing of a bishop and five others in a church in Sydney.
His parents and brother were relocated in the wake of his attack.
They have not attended any of his court dates and are devastated by his crimes.
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