The yoga teacher who organized a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at which three young girls were stabbed to death is speaking out about the attack for the first time.
In an interview with BBC Panorama, Leanne Lucas discussed the moment Axel Rudakubana — who was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison last month following the Southport, U.K. attack on July 29, 2024 — entered The Hart Space community center, before stabbing her and many other young victims.
“I just knew that if I didn’t get out everyone was going to die,” Lucas recalled, per the BBC.
Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar.
Courtesy of Merseyside Police
“He was bigger than me. And I just thought: ‘I need to get some help.’ So we all run towards the door. We were shouting: ‘Run!’ ” before she called the police.
Lucas, who suffered life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, said of the attacker, “He opened the door and grabbed a child…He then grabbed the next child and the next child. And then I shout: ‘Who is that?’ “
“He moves through the girls by the table and moves next to me,” she went on. “I just felt something go in my back and my brain just said – he got me.”
Lucas suffered stab wounds to her spine, head, ribs, lung, and shoulder blade in the attack. Despite her injuries, she told the outlet she managed to get several girls out of the room before Rudakubana chased after them.
“I remember shouting for them to get down and get out. So I was physically pushing them down the stairs to get everyone out,” she said.
“I thought that he wasn’t going to stop until he killed everyone,” she said, adding that the attacker “looked possessed.”
Leanne Lucas.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6, died from their injuries in the attack.
Yoga teacher Lucas was running the class, with the help of her dance teacher friend, Heidi Liddle, and a girl, now 14, who the BBC is calling Sarah to protect her identity.
Lucas said of her injuries, “I asked someone if I was going to die. And she didn’t say ‘no.’ She just said ‘You’re in the best place.’ “
She also shared that the police said her actions saved lives, “[but] that gives nothing for the children who did die… that doesn’t take that away,” she said.
On Jan. 23, attacker Rudakubana, now 18, was sentenced to life in jail for the murders of the three young girls. He was also charged with the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults, among other charges.
The day after the stabbings, Swift shared a message on her Instagram Stories.
The singer wrote in the July 30 post, “The horror of yesterday’s attack in Southport is washing over me continuously, and I’m just completely in shock…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.”
