Girls who survived Southport attack meet again: ‘It was like having big sisters’ | Southport attack
From the outside, the small gathering of young girls looked like an ordinary playdate. They chatted giddily, practised pilates and twirled around in their new outfits to the music of Harry Styles. But on the sidelines, some of the parents were in tears. The last time these girls shared a room was on 29 July 2024. That day, they fled in fear as a hooded teenager turned a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport into one of the most horrific attacks on children in modern British history. Three girls – Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – were murdered and eight other children and two adults were stabbed repeatedly, some critically injured. The idea that any of the surviving children would feel able to meet again seemed impossible until recently. Only now, nearly two years on, the parents of five of those girls are ready to speak. Over nearly four hours of interviews, they told the Guardian of their daughters’ heroism that day, when girls of primary …
