Overview
- - Lancashire’s ACC Mark Winstanley told the inquiry he was extremely sorry and accepted the 2022 decision not to arrest Axel Rudakubana was the wrong response.
- - He agreed that arresting the then 15-year-old after he was found with a knife could have led to a home search revealing ricin seeds and an Al-Qaeda manual, likely triggering a counter-terror investigation.
- - Evidence showed PC David Fairclough misread 2019 logs, graded a 2022 missing-person case as medium risk, found the teen on a bus with a knife, and returned him home despite the teen stating he wanted to stab people and make poison.
- - Inquiry documents also detailed a 2019 police email raising a possible terrorism link and multiple Prevent referrals, underscoring confusion over which agency owned the risk.
- - New testimony described 2023 safeguarding attempts blocked by parents, a police call that failed the ‘right care, right person’ threshold, and a review that found minimal information was logged by the call handler.