The prime minister was met with hostility by some members of the public while placing a floral tribute in Southport after several children were stabbed. Three children have so far died in the attack and several others are in critical condition.
How does a community come to terms with an attack that hits with such ferocity, such barbarity, such searing horror that it is beyond even the stuff of nightmares?, writes Josh Halliday and Hannah Al-Othman.
What sort of society do we live in when a highlight of the summer holidays, in the middle of a sunny day at the seaside, turns into what witnesses likened to “a scene from a horror movie”?
And perhaps the most pressing question being asked by families in Southport and beyond: why?
“The whole community is feeling very numb,” said one woman, whose seven-year-old daughter was friends with one of the three young girls killed at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport on Monday.
“Her friend and two others are no longer here,” she added. “She’s struggling to get her head round it but she’s asked a lot of questions about why would someone do that, who did it. I hope we get answers that we need so we can move forward.”
Joel Verite described hearing a woman screaming “he’s stabbing kids” as he drove near the dance studio in Hart Street, Southport.
The window cleaner told Sky News: “We start running towards this place where she’s talking about.
“As I’m running towards the door, there’s a car, there’s a woman in the car, and she’s screaming for me to come over.
“She’s got a child in the passenger seat, and then in the back there’s like four or five more kids, covered in blood.
“It was like a scene you’d see on a disaster film, honestly.
“I can’t even explain how horrific it was.”
Verite said he carried a girl out of the car’s front passenger seat to get her to safety.
He also described locking eyes with a knifeman inside the dance studio in Southport before the alleged attacker “scurried off”.
“I run towards the door, the entrance and exit to the dance studio,” he told Sky News.
“There were two men in the gym where I used to go to … they’re pointing to the dance studio saying ‘he’s in there’.
“I open the door downstairs … there’s a guy at the bottom of the stairs with a full tracksuit, his hood up, with a knife.
“We’ve looked at each other and he’s scurried off to the side.”
Shortly before his visit to the scene, the prime minister met with first responders.
Keir Starmer said he wanted “to say a personal thank you to them and to shake their hand – and to say that as prime minister, on behalf of the country, we are grateful for what they did”.
“It’s not what any of them came to work for. But of course, they’re professionals, and they deal with it,” he said.
“I think about the families, the friends, the loved ones, those directly impacted and of course, the wider community here.
“But I think anybody in the country is not untouched by what happened.”
The PM reiterated his commitment to “get to grips” with knife crime, but said “today is the time to focus entirely on the families”.
Source: theguardian.com
