Taylor Swift ‘in shock’ after three children stabbed to death during Swift-themed dance class – National
A knife attack has Taylor SwiftA football-themed dance and yoga class in England has claimed another child’s life after a nine-year-old girl died from her injuries on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to three.
Eight other children and two adults remain in hospital, several in critical condition. The other two children who died were girls aged six and seven, Merseyside Police said.
Police are questioning a 17-year-old suspect who was arrested minutes after Monday’s attack in Southport.
Taylor Swift wrote in an Instagram story On Tuesday, she said she was “completely shocked” by the “horror of yesterday’s attack.”
“They were just little kids taking part in a dance class. I don’t know how to express my sympathy to these families,” she wrote.
Screenshot of an Instagram story posted by Taylor Swift, expressing her sympathies for the victims of the Southport stabbing attack on Monday that claimed the lives of three children.
Instagram/Taylorswift
Witnesses described scenes “straight out of a horror movie” as bloodied children fled the attack just before midday on Monday.
“They were on the road, running away from the daycare,” said Bare Varathan, a nearby shop owner. “They had been stabbed, here, here, here, everywhere,” he said, pointing to their necks, backs and chests.
Jonathan Hayes, a local businessman, was stabbed in the leg after hearing screams coming from his office and rushing into the dance studio to protect the children, The Telegraph reports.
“Our office is in the same building as the dance studio. He heard screams and went outside, saw the attacker, saw that he had injured a child and tried to take the knife away from him and was stabbed in the leg,” Haye’s wife Helen told the newspaper.
“He is very disappointed that he could not be more useful. Physically he will be fine, mentally I don’t know,” she added.
A person lays flowers near the crime scene in Hart Street, Southport, Britain, on Tuesday. Three children died and nine were injured in a “ferocious” knife attack at a Taylor Swift event at a dance school on Monday.
James Speakman/PA via AP
Shortly after the attack, police arrested a suspect on suspicion of murder and attempted murder and seized a knife. Police said he was born in Cardiff, Wales, and had lived for years in a village about three miles from Southport. He has not yet been charged.
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Police said detectives were not considering Monday’s attack to be terrorism-related and were not looking for any other suspects.
Local residents laid flowers and stuffed animals in tribute to a police cordon on the brick-lined street in the seaside resort near Liverpool – dubbed “sunny Southport” – whose beach and pier attract holidaymakers from across the north-west of England.
People lay flowers near the scene of the incident in Hart Street, Southport, where three children died and eight were injured in a “ferocious” knife attack at a Taylor Swift event at a dance school on Monday.
James Speakman/PA Images via Getty Images
It is the latest shocking attack in a country where a recent increase in knife crime has stoked concerns and led to calls for the government to do more to crack down on bladed weapons, which are by far the most common instrument used in homicides in the UK.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack a “horrible and deeply shocking.”
King Charles III sent his “condolences, prayers and deepest sympathy” to those affected by this “absolutely horrific incident.”
Prince William and his wife Catherine said Monday that “as parents we cannot imagine what the families, friends and loved ones of those killed and injured in Southport are going through today.”
Colin Parry, owner of a nearby body shop, told the Guardian the suspect arrived by taxi.
“He pulled into our driveway in a taxi and didn’t pay the taxi fare, so I confronted him at that point,” Parry said. “He was pretty aggressive, he said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’”
Parry said most of the victims appeared to be young girls.
“Mothers come here now and scream,” Parry said. “It’s like a scene from a horror movie. (…) It’s like an American movie, not sunny Southport.”
Police are working at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been arrested and a knife seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing on Monday.
James Speakman/PA via AP
Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when Thomas Hamilton, 43, shot dead 16 nursery school children and their teacher in a school gym in Dunblane, Scotland. prohibits private property of almost all handguns.
Mass shootings and gun murders are rare in Britain, where knives were used in around 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023.
Although mass stabbing attacks are also rare, several have sparked fear and outrage in recent years and received considerable attention.
In April, a man with a sword killed a 14-year-old boy While on his way to school in London, he seriously injured four other people, including two police officers.
In Nottingham, central England, in June 2022, a paranoid schizophrenic man Two students fatally stabbed He was returning home after celebrating the end of the school year and then killed a 65-year-old man, stole his van and used it to hit three pedestrians.
In Reading, west London, in June 2020, a failed Libyan asylum seeker Three men fatally stabbed and injured three others.
— With reporting from The Associated Press and Reuters
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
