Southport knife attack: third child dies of injuries

Three children have been killed and eight injured after a "horror movie" knife attack at a dance class in Merseyside.

Six-year-old Bebe King and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, were pronounced dead following the rampage in Southport yesterday. Alice Dasilva Aguiar, aged nine, died from her injuries in the early hours of this morning, reported the BBC.

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after the rampage at a summer holidays Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class. A teenager armed with a knife entered the class and started to attack the children at about 11.47am yesterday, shortly before the session was due to end. The organiser of the class was one of two adults stabbed in the attack. 

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Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy told reporters that officers were "shocked to find that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a ferocious attack and suffered serious injuries". Residents told Sky News the massacre was like a "scene from a horror movie".

Taylor Swift has shared a message of condolence on her Instagram account, saying she is "completely in shock" over the violent attack on a class full of young fans. "These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families."

Police said the motivation for Monday's attack was "unclear", but it was not being treated as terror related. The teenager in custody was "born in Cardiff and moved to the Southport area in 2013" with his parents, who are from Rwanda, and a brother also born in Cardiff, said the BBC.

As "people in Southport try to deal with the horror", said Vikram Dodd, police and crime correspondent at The Guardian, formal processes will follow, including a criminal trial of the suspect and inquests into the deaths. There will also be trauma programmes for the emergency services workers who were first on the scene. The attack "stirs memories of the Dunblane massacre", when in March 1996 a gunman killed 16 schoolchildren and a teacher before taking his own life.