2 little girls dead, 9 injured in mass stabbing at Taylor Swift dance party in Southport, UK
Two young children were killed and nine others injured when a hooded, knife-wielding teenager rampaged through a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in the UK Monday morning, police said.
The horror unfolded shortly before noon in Southport, just outside Liverpool, when the unidentified 17-year-old arrived by taxi and started attacking the children and adults trying to stop him.
Hours later, Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy confirmed that two children died and nine others were injured, including six left fighting for their lives — along with two adults left in critical condition from being stabbed as they “were bravely trying to protect” the kids.
Responding officers “were shocked to find that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a ferocious attack and had serious injuries,” Kennedy said.
“As a mom and a nana, I can’t begin to imagine the pain and suffering that the families and the victims are going through at this time.”
A 17-year-old male was arrested, police said — stressing that it is “not currently being treated as terror-related.”
No other possible motive was suggested, nor any connection between the suspect and any of those attacked.
Witnesses said the attacker wore a “black hood” when he entered the Hart Space, which also houses a nursery and had advertised “a morning of Taylor Swift-themed yoga, dance and bracelet making.”
“It is like a scene from a horror movie,” local merchant Colin Parry told the BBC. “They are coming here now and screaming. It’s like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”
At least 25 children from the ages of 6 to 11 were at the event when the carnage unfolded — with the knifeman reportedly pulling up in a taxi, witnesses said.
“I saw seven to 10 kids outside the nursery,” said Bare Varathan, who owns a nearby shop. “They were injured, bleeding.
“They were in the road, running from the nursery,” Varathan said. “They had been stabbed, here, here, here, everywhere,” he said, indicating the neck, back and chest.
A Hart Space employee described the chaos.
“When I got there, there was a guy who was absolutely distraught, in a mess,” he said. “He’d seen two children run out of the Hart Space and he though they had got hit by a car because the car was just full of blood at the side of the car.
“But it was actually that the children who had been stabbed had fallen into the car,” the staffer said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it “horrendous and deeply shocking.”
The victims were rushed to three local children’s hospitals, where they were being treated after the attack.
The wounded victims were taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Aintree University Hospital and Southport and Formby Hospital. Their conditions were not immediately available.
One witness reported the heart-wrenching scene outside the venue following the attack.
