An adolescent charged with the manslaughter of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop was once featured in a BBC Children in Need video impersonating Doctor Who, it has been revealed.
The suspect in the Southport stabbings, where eight other children and two adults were severely wounded on Monday, is Axel Rudakubana, aged 17.
The victims of the attack were Bebe King (aged 6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (aged 7), and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (aged 9).
Just over a day after appearing in Liverpool Crown Court, footage surfaced showing Rudakubana in the advertisement.
At the age of 12, Rudakubana was seen wearing a brown trench coat, blue suit, and a tie emerging from a Tardis.
In the 45-second video, he announces ‘It’s that time of year again’ and suggests how viewers can raise funds for Children In Need, such as by dressing up ‘as every Doctor Who character’.
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‘You have the ability to jog from the northern point of Scotland to the southern tip of England – in reverse,’ he conveyed to spectators.
The footage – shot in Blackpool back in 2018 – was taken down earlier today by both the BBC and the Ology child talent agency that managed him, as reported by the Daily Mail.
During filming, Rudakubana had engaged with the theatre group at his educational institution to forge friendships, sources revealed.
This led to his participation in a live performance at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End.
He was also passionate about vocalizing, with local residents in the vicinity of Banks, near Southport, sharing that he was part of a choir connected with a local church.
A spokesperson for BBC Children in Need expressed, following the discovery of the video: ‘Our heartfelt condolences go out to all those affected by this distressing situation.’
‘Out of respect for them, we have taken down the video from all our platforms.’
More details about the accused have been emerging in the hours subsequent to the disclosure of his identity by a judge.
Rudakubana will come of age at 18 next week, and the judge decided to lift the restrictions considering the proliferating ‘misinformation’ surrounding his identity.
An unfounded assertion about the perpetrator being an asylum seeker or immigrant has garnered at least 15.7 million views across X platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and others, according to a Reuters examination.
A false claim suggesting he was an undocumented migrant who arrived on a small vessel appeared on the website ‘Channel 3 Now’.
Andrew Tate shared an image of a man he alleged was responsible for the assault, captioned ‘straight off the boat’.
However, this claim proved to be erroneous as the picture depicted a 51-year-old individual arrested for a separate stabbing incident in Ireland the prior year.
Online, numerous individuals erroneously linked another man photographed with a knife in French media after an incident in Annecy last June to the Southport suspect.
That individual, a Syrian refugee, has been in custody pending trial in France since the event.
Separately, an analysis by Channel 4 revealed that 49% of the social media traffic mentioning ‘Southport Muslim’ – alluding to an unverified allegation regarding the assailant’s faith – originated from the US, while 30% came from the UK.
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