Southport’s attacker’s ricin ‘killed my cat’ neighbour claims

The neighbour of an 18-year-old who pleaded guilty to the murder of three girls in Southport last summer said a toxin produced by the killer also led to the death of her cat.

Merseyside Police found the biological toxin ricin in teenager Axel Rudakubana’s room in Southport on July 29, the same day he killed three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The teenager pleaded guilty to murder at Liverpool Crown Court today, Monday, January 20.

Caroline McDonald, 50, said she felt she had been lied to by the police, who didn’t publicly disclose that they had found the toxin which may have killed her cat until October 29.

“I’m angry that the police lied to us,” she said. “They sent an inspector round to the house and lied to my face saying there was nothing toxic or hazardous found next door – that was an outright lie.”

“It might have been low risk to a human, but it wasn’t low risk to my cat,” the 50-year-old told The Telegraph.

She believes that her nine-year-old cat Jo Jo was poisoned after coming into contact with the ricin while venturing into a forensic tent outside Ruakubana’s house.

Nearly a month after police first discovered the toxin, on August 26, a plain clothed officer warned Ms McDonald that her cat “kept going into the forensic tent and possibly got into the house”.

She said Jo Jo started foaming from the mouth and had a seizure the next day, leaving her no choice but to have him euthanised.

No toxicology report was carried out on the pet and health officials have confirmed that ricin poses a low risk to both the public and emergency workers, except when inhaled, injected or ingested.

Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering the three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Monday, January 20.

It emerged during the trial that he had been referred three times to the government’s counter-terrorism programme Prevent after concerns about his obsession with violence and viewing material related to US school shootings.

Criticism of an orchestrated cover-up abounded following the horrific attacks in July, with widespread rioting across the UK fuelled by misinformation about the identity of the attacker, who some initially speculated was an asylum seeker.

Public figures are now facing questions about why the 18-year-old’s possession of ricin and an Al-Qaeda training document weren’t made public for three months after the Southport killings.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “This reflects very badly on the Prime Minister. We have been denied the truth on this by the police and the Government, it is disgraceful.

“There has been a gigantic cover up from day one, the authorities knew very very quickly about his expulsion from school, the ricin making and the Al-Qaeda material, yet they refused to class the murders as terror related for fear of the reaction there might have been.”

Rudakubana also broke into his old school and attempted to attack other students with a hockey stick after he was expelled for knife possession.

The teen was expelled from Range High School after being caught with a blade aged just 13. After being sent to a pupil referral unit in Lancashire, he returned to his old school with a “hit list” of children he wanted to attack.

Students escaped harm by shutting themselves in classrooms during the incident and Rudakubana was tackled to the ground and disarmed by his former headmaster.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced that she will launch a public inquiry into how Rudakubana “came to be so dangerous” and why Prevent “failed to identify the terrible risk” he posed.

Ms Cooper said the 18-year-old had “contact with a range of different state agencies throughout his teenage years” before killing Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in Southport on July 29.

“He was referred three times to the Prevent programme between December 2019 and April 2021 aged 13 and 14,” the Home Secretary said.

“He also had contact with the police, the courts, the Youth Justice system, social services and mental health services.

“Yet between them, those agencies failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed.”