Grief, hate and healing: Southport picks up the pieces after week of horror

After the singing and dancing, there was screaming. And then silence. Paramedics and firefighters crouched to the ground, ashen-faced, struggling to process the horror they had witnessed.

The blue lights of their vehicles continued to flash two hours after the atrocity but their sirens were turned off, like an emergency on mute. The only sound was from the police helicopter above.

Days later, Southport remains in a state of trauma. Many in the seaside town are struggling to come to terms not only with the barbarity of Monday’s attack, which left three young girls dead and several others in critical care, but also how its grief was so violently infringed upon only a day later.

“There is a sense of horror and disbelief,” said the Rev Marie-Anne Kent, whose church, St Philip and St Paul with Wesley, is around the corner from the Hart Space, the yoga studio where the holiday club attacks took place.

Kent, a Methodist minister, was speaking to the Guardian on the frontline of Tuesday’s riot, wearing her clerical collar, when a masked man shouted in her face: “Don’t let Muslims in. They need to fuck off out of our country.”

Horrified and shaken, she said: “I came down to pray for our Muslim brothers and sisters. This is appalling. This isn’t Southport. This isn’t Southport.”

Speaking on Friday, after the violence had spread to other towns and cities across England, with further far-right rallies planned at the weekend, Kent said Southport was “holding our breath, waiting for what’s going to happen next”.

“The events of Monday were horrific. No community should have to go through that, and for that to be compounded by a hate crime …” she said, at a loss for words.

Summer is when Southport comes alive. On Monday the seafront would have been filled with daytrippers enjoying the rides at Pleasureland, with the clink-clank of miniature trains ferrying children up the promenade, when a man wearing a face mask walked into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class shortly before midday.

Using a kitchen knife, he lunged at the defenceless young girls. People heard the piercing screams from neighbouring houses. Parents arriving to pick up their children were met with their bloodied bodies falling out into the street.

Three girls – six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar – were unable to survive their injuries. Eight other children were attacked, with five left in a critical condition. Of those, on Thursday five were stable in hospital and two had been discharged.

Two adults who were stabbed trying to protect the youngsters have been hailed as heroes. The dance class teacher, Leanne Lucas, 35, and John Hayes, 63, remain in hospital but are both alert and talking. Hayes, whose business is based on the floor beneath the yoga studio, told the Guardian he was lucky to be alive as the blade narrowly missed his femoral artery. The police, he said, were “the real heroes”.

By the following morning, a sea of flowers had blossomed on Hart Street. Young children arrived with their parents and grandparents to lay cuddly toys brought from their own bedrooms; some wore dancing costumes and little girls dressed as Elsa, the Disney princess in Frozen.

Three ballerinas – representing Bebe, Elsie and Alice – appeared at one end of the crime scene.

Away from the tributes, unrest was brewing. A false name for the suspect was circulating widely online, amplified by a faux news website. Posts speculating that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, a refugee or a foreigner were viewed nearly 30m times on X, according to one analysis .

Rightwing figures such as Andrew Tate, Lawrence Fox and Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, dialled up the rhetoric before Nigel Farage, the newly elected MP for Clacton in Essex, questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us”.

A 17-year-old boy from the nearby village of Banks was arrested in connection with the attack but the media were unable to identify him when he was charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article, as he is under 18. In an extraordinary move, a judge on Thursday ruled that Axel Rudakubana, born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, could be named as the defendant , largely to help dispel the disinformation.

There had been signs of tension in Southport in the 24 hours after the attack, most notably in Banks. Residents made reference to the attacker’s ethnicity, some made anti-immigration remarks.

These sinister undercurrents rose to the surface shortly before 4pm on Tuesday when Keir Starmer, the prime minister, arrived to lay flowers at Hart Street, to shouts of “how many more children will die?” and “get the truth out”.

The focus seemed to return to the grieving families two hours later when more than 1,000 people filled a grand Victorian square in the town centre for a vigil, which ended with a sombre minute’s silence.

Yet as pink balloons danced in the summer evening, plans for violence were afoot. Dozens of young men, many swigging from cans, were storming up Saint Luke’s Road in the direction of Southport mosque. Cars packed the surrounding streets, hinting at the size of the crowd and that people had travelled some distance to be there.

Detectives had known about plans for a far-right march for several hours but its scale and aggression clearly shocked officers on the ground. A dozen officers, armed only with batons, were goaded then physically assaulted by the rioters. Within minutes, bricks, fireworks, plant pots and masonry rained down on four yellow police riot vans, parked in front of the mosque.

Inside, eight worshippers were sheltering and felt the building shake from the ferocity of the violence. A brick was launched through a window of the mosque as rioters tried, without success, to get inside. By 8.36pm, one of the police vans was ablaze, prompting jubilation among the crowd.

Down the street, Carol Hignett, 73, watched with horror from her bedroom as masked men broke into the corner shop opposite, Windsor Mini Mart, running out with armfuls of cigarettes, vodka and whiskey. An industrial wheelie bin was set alight and rammed at riot police, to cheers from the masked men, many livestreaming the violence to their friends.

As the sun went down, Merseyside police called in emergency reinforcements from neighbouring regions. More than 50 of its officers had been injured and there were fears it could become more violent.

Families who had fled their homes were braced for the worst when they returned in the morning. Lauren Leatherbarrow, who had bundled her three-year-old son and one-year-daughter into a car as the violence escalated, surveyed a huge clean-up operation – at first by volunteers, who were quickly joined by council teams, firefighters, glass fitters and local tradesmen.

The roads, hours earlier a scene of broken glass and scattered debris, had been swept by breakfast and resurfaced by lunch. A wall outside the mosque that had been torn down, its bricks used as missiles, was fully repaired as its windows were replaced.

In just over a day, Rose Tucker, the owner of a beauty salon, had raised nearly £14,000 to repair the damage to her neighbouring business, the Windsor Mini Mart. Thanuja Balasuriya, who ran the shop with her husband, said they had been “heartbroken” by the vandalism but had been “surrounded by love and care” from the Southport community.

Local people handed out mini doughnuts and flowers to worshippers attending Friday prayers at Southport mosque, where a peace lily had been placed by its newly rebuilt wall.

Despite the protective gaze of police officers, there were signs of nervousness among the congregation, who said there was a lower turnout than usual. Ishak Shaikh, who works in Southport and normally attends Friday prayers there, said: “It was quieter today than it normally is. I don’t think people wanted to come after the incident the other night.”

He said normally people would pray outside because it can be too crowded but, though prayer mats were in place, nobody wanted to be on display. Omar Miah, another local man, agreed. “I normally bring my kids but I didn’t feel right about it today.”

Kent, the Methodist minister, planned to visit the mosque on Friday as a show of solidarity to those attending Jummah, a fixture in the Muslim calendar. “Our faith says ‘love will conquer all’ and from Ecclesiastes ‘There’s a time for mourning and a time for dancing’,” she said.

“And hopefully we will learn to dance again but never forget the events of Monday, because they are the important ones. We shouldn’t let that be overshadowed by the events of Tuesday.”