Overview

• Sergeant Greg Gillespie, PC Luke Holden and PCSO Tim Parry were named overall winners of the Police Federation of England and Wales’ 2025 bravery awards for confronting a knife attacker at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class
• In their first public testimonies, the officers described arriving to chaos, making eye contact with Rudakubana on a stairwell and seeing him drop the knife once he realised they would not back down
• Axel Rudakubana murdered nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, six-year-old Bebe King and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and wounded ten others last July and is now serving a minimum 52-year prison sentence
• Sir Adrian Fulford’s public inquiry is examining how Prevent and other agencies failed to act on multiple referrals that might have flagged Rudakubana’s threat
• Survivors’ families have called for formal apologies and comprehensive reforms to information sharing and youth violence prevention processes