Rudakubana was in fact born in Cardiff to parents of Rwandan origin, and lived in Banks, a village northeast of Southport.

His Christian church-going parents, both ethnic Tutsis, came to Britain in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to UK media.

The attack has not been treated as a terror incident and he was never charged with terrorism offences — prompting criticism from some.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed Tuesday to update terror legislation “if the law needs to change”, to recognise what he called the new threat of individuals intent on “extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake”.

Meanwhile, interior minister Yvette Cooper announced a public inquiry would probe how police, courts and welfare services “failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed”.

Failures

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed in the attack in the seaside resort near Liverpool on July 29, 2024.

Ten others were wounded, including eight children, in one of the country’s worst mass stabbings in decades.

The unrest linked to the killings lasted nearly a week.

Rioters attacked police, shops and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as mosques, with hundreds arrested and charged at the time and over the subsequent months.

Authorities blamed far-right agitators for fuelling the violence, including by sharing misinformation about the attacker.

Following Monday’s guilty plea and the lifting of court reporting restrictions, new information has emerged about Rudakubana.

He had been referred three times to the government’s nationwide anti-extremism scheme, Prevent, over concerns about his obsession with violence.