Three girls were stabbed to death and five other children were seriously injured in an attack at a dance class in the city of Southampton in northwest England.
The police are questioning a 17-year-old who was arrested a few minutes after the tragedy. He is suspected of murder and attempted murder at a "Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop" for children aged six to 11 on Monday morning.
Police confirmed yesterday that the third child succumbed to injuries sustained in the attack and named the victims as Bebe King (6), Elsi Dot Stankomb (7) and Alis Dasilva Agujar (9).
"Keep smiling and dancing, our princess. As we told you, you will always be our princess and no one will change that," the Agujar family said in a statement.
The King family said: "There are no words to describe the devastation that has hit our family as we try to come to terms with the loss of our baby girl."
Another eight children suffered stab wounds and five are in critical condition. Two adults were also seriously injured while trying to protect the young victims, police said.
The carnage is the latest shocking attack in a country where a recent rise in knife crime has fueled concern and led to calls for the government to do more to crack down on cold-blooded weapons, which are by far the most common means of killing in the UK.
"I am very concerned about the high levels of knife crime and I am absolutely determined that my government tackles it," British Prime Minister Kir Starmer said yesterday.
Witnesses said they heard screams and saw children covered in blood coming out of Hart Space, a community center that hosts a range of activities, from pregnancy workshops and meditation sessions to women's boot camps.
"The horror of yesterday's attack in Southampton continues to overwhelm me and I am in complete shock," wrote American singer Taylor Swift on Instagram.
"These were just little kids in dance class."
Her fans have raised more than £125.000 ($160.000) online to help the victims' families and the hospital where some of the children are being treated.
Police said the attacker was born in Cardiff, Wales and had lived for years in a village about five kilometers from Southport. He has not yet been charged.
Colin Perry, owner of a nearby body shop, told The Guardian that the suspect arrived by taxi.
"He took a cab to our driveway and didn't pay for the cab, so I confronted him at that point," Perry said. "He was quite aggressive and said, 'What are you going to do about it?'"
"Mothers would come here and scream. It was like a scene from a horror movie. ... like something out of America, not like sunny Southport," Peri said.
Prime Minister Starmer described the attack as "horrendous" and police are not treating it as terrorism, while King Charles and his family said they were shocked by what happened.
Merseyside Police said a motive was unclear but they were not looking for other people in connection with the murders.
The tragedy shocked Southampton, a quiet seaside town, and Home Secretary Ivet Cooper was one of many who visited the scene yesterday to lay flowers.
"This truly horrific attack will cause deep distress across the country, as well as here in Southampton, as it exceeds every parent's worst nightmare," she told reporters. Cooper said it was important for police to pursue every possible lead in the investigation, amid a flood of speculation on social media about a suspect.
"A name has been shared on social media in relation to a suspect in an incident in Southport," police said. "That name is incorrect and we ask people not to speculate on the details of the incident while the investigation is ongoing."
The knife murders sparked fear and outrage
Britain's worst attack on children took place in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The United Kingdom then banned private ownership of nearly all handguns, according to the AP.
Mass shootings and murders by firearms are rare in Britain, where knives were used in around 40 percent of murders in the period up to March 2023.
Although mass knife murders are also rare, several such incidents in recent years have sparked fear and outrage and attracted enormous attention.
In London in April, a man used a sword to kill a 14-year-old boy as he walked to school and seriously injured four others, including two police officers.
In Nottingham, central England, in June 2022, a paranoid schizophrenic stabbed to death two students returning home from an end-of-year party, then killed a 65-year-old man, stole his van and rammed it into three pedestrians.
In Reading, west of London, in June 2020, a Libyan man who was denied asylum stabbed three men to death and wounded three others.
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