The teenager accused of the multiple stabbing of children in Southport rarely left the family home, and is a mystery to locals.
“I’ve lived here 20 years – I’ve never, ever seen him,” one said today near the family home of Axel Rudakubana in Banks, a quiet village, three miles outside the seaside town.
The family – father, mother and his elder brother – moved to Banks from Cardiff around a decade ago.
Neighbours there describe a “lovely couple” with a hardworking father and stay-at-home mother to “two boisterous boys”.
Rudakubana’s father is originally from Rwanda, a country that suffered a deadly genocide in the early 1990s, and moved to the UK in 2002, he told his local newspaper in Southport.
The suspect would accompany his father to karate classes as a child in Wales, sensei Chico Mbakwe, an instructor in Cardiff, said.
He told the PA news agency: “He would come and do grading and his father would take him home. I can’t even really remember the boy but can vaguely remember the dad.
“The last time I saw the father he was taking part in his grading, he wasn’t my student, he was somebody else’s.
“I told him you can carry on, but even if you have a brainstorm and turn it on now I would still fail you.”
Despite the discouraging start, Rudakubana’s father pursued his interest in martial arts in the north of England.
A profile of Aphonse Rudakubana in his local paper, The Southport Visiter, said he moved to the area in 2013 and trained with local clubs.
The family lived in mid-terrace three-bed house on a newly built cul-de-sac of a dozen or so houses.
During the accused’s first appearance at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday, after being charged with three murders and 10 attempted murders, he initially smiled on entering the courtroom – then kept his face covered by his sweatshirt for the remainder of proceedings.
Unusually, the youngster appears to have no digital footprint online.
A local source in Banks said the alleged killer did not mix with others, though the family are unremarkable and there had been no sign of anything wrong.
“Nobody knows them. It’s only the father who went to work who I’ve ever seen,” a near neighbour of the family said.
She added: “You can’t believe anything would happen like this in this sort of place.”
Locals said they have not seen the family since police arrived at the house shortly after the attack in Southport.
A police cordon remains around the property.
