Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “horrendous and deeply shocking.” King Charles sent his “condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies” for those affected by the “utterly horrific incident.”
Police were called shortly before noon to a street where several small businesses are located behind rows of brick houses in the city of about 100,000.
A police officer lays flowers at the scene of the attack where two children were stabbed and 11 others injured.Credit: Getty Images
The first officers who arrived were shocked to find so many casualties from the “ferocious attack,” most of them children with serious injuries, Kennedy said.
Colin Parry, an auto body shop owner, said most of the stabbing victims appeared to be young girls.
“The mothers are coming here now and screaming,” Parry said. “It is like a scene from a horror movie. … It’s like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”
The suspect, who has not been identified, lived in a village about 8 kilometres from the site of the attack, police said. He was originally from Cardiff, Wales.
Ryan Carney, who lives with his mother in the street, said his mother saw emergency workers carrying children “covered in red, covered in blood. She said she could see the stab wounds in the backs of the children.”
“All this stuff never really happens around here,” he said. “You hear of it, stabbings and stuff like that in major cities, your Manchesters, your Londons. This is sunny Southport. That’s what people call it. The sun’s out. It’s a lovely place to be.”
Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergarten pupils and their teacher dead in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The UK subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.
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