The teacher of Southport stabbing victim Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, has said they ‘don’t want her to be forgotten’ and want to continue ‘the legacy’
The teacher of a Southport stabbing victim has said they “don’t want her to be forgotten”, months after the knife attack that killed her.
Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, was one of the three young girls savagely stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance with a kitchen knife by Axel Rudakubana, in July. Alice da Silva Aguiar, eight, and Bebe King, six, were also knifed in the brutal attack that shocked the nation last summer. The headteacher of Elsie’s school, Farnborough Road Infant School, Jennifer Sephton said she will be skydiving to help raise funds for a charitable trust set up after the beloved student’s death.
Ms Sephton said she wanted everybody to remember Elsie’s story and to continue “the legacy”, she told Sky News. The headteacher said: “She’d been with us for four years, throughout her education and we just want everybody to know Elsie’s spirit.”
She praised the seven-year-old’s character and called her “such a determined young lady” with a “real zest for life, and a sparkle in her eye all the time”.
The headteacher revealed benches and trees have been set up and planted as memorials to Elsie to give students and staff a place to “remember and reflect”.
She said: “[Elsie’s death] had such an impact on all our community it’s had an impact on her friends, their siblings, our school as a community and our staff.”
Ms Sephton has not been alone in her mission to keep Elsie’s story going and to fundraise. Adrian Antell, the headteacher at the school the seven-year-old was due to start at last September, said he wanted to keep the memory of Elsie alive.
He said: “What we’ve learned about her is that she had a wonderful impact in the infant school, and we don’t want her to be forgotten. We want her name to have to live on and to be thought of in a positive way.”
Mr Antell will join Ms Sephton in the skydive to help raise money for Elsie’s charitable cause. Rudakubana is currently serving a minimum term of 52 years behind bars for savagely murdering three children and for the attempted murder of 10 other people.
The triple murdered has appeared to continue being a danger after he was said to have launched a boiling water attack on a prison guard at HMP Belmarsh, one of the UK’s most secure jails, on May 8.
Rudakubana now faces a level of confinement described as ‘not far off Hannibal Lecter’, for example being kept almost entirely in his cell and only allowed out for brief showers or exercise. Every movement will be tightly controlled, requiring a five-officer escort in full PPE, with dogs also potentially used.