Vincent McAviney: UK correspondent on the fatal stabbing attack on two children in Southport

Two children have been killed and nine others injured after a deadly stabbing attack in Southport, north of Liverpool.

Six young victims have been left in critical condition and police have arrested a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

UK correspondent Vincent McAviney says Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the King and Queen are among those who have sent their sympathies to the victims of the attack. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Vincent mecavinnie is our UK correspondent and he joins us now, Hello, Vincent,
good afternoon. The whole world does a gaget the two
children did in the knife attack in Southport? What do
you know?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, this is a horrific story. It is the summer
holidays here in the UK now, and these children were
attending a Taylor Swift themed dancervent in Southport, Merseyside, which
is in the northwest of England. We understand that a
seventeen year old boy from Lancashire, who was wearing a
COVID mask, was able to access the facility because they

(00:33):
have to have the door locked for fire safety reasons,
and he then went on a horrific rampage. He's believed
he killed two children. Nine were injured. Six are said
to be in a critical condition, and two adults who
are thought to be those involved with running the class,
who were trying to protect the children and to stop

(00:53):
the knifeman, have also been injured. They are said to
be in a critical condition, all of them in hospital
at the moment. The seventeen year old is under arrest.
He has not been yet charged. Police say they do
not know yet the motive for the attack, but it
has not been treated as terror related and obviously the
local community is incredibly shocked. The Prime Minister as well

(01:17):
as the King and Queen have led tributes offering their
heartfelt condolences to what has a really horrible start to
the summer holidays here in the UK.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, it should have been a joyous day for young
kids and it ended up being a very very terrible day.
Will follow their story very closely, and digerally want to
know his motive. Now we have a fan lift just
to risk over the French railway vandalism.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, that's right. Well France has managed to recover from
that damage quite quickly. They got their trains back up
and running by Monday, but of course it wasn't the
start that they wanted to their Olympics, having about eight
hundred thousand people have their journeys disrupted. Now, what's been
strange is that the French government haven't come forward and
actually said who has done it, and no one has

(02:01):
claimed responsibility, So there was thoughts of is it a
political group, is it sort of an eco group, or
is it a foreign government perhaps Russia deciding to be
a bit nefarious at the start He's games, but it
was curious that no one had come forward. Now yesterday
we learned that on Monday, a sorry, on Monday, a
Ultra Left militant was arrested in northwest France. He had

(02:25):
been behaving suspiciously near a railway line and when he
was detained, officers who searched the man's car found technical
guide suppliers, a set of universal keys, and literature linked
to the Ultra Left. He was twenty eight years old
from the city of Rua, and he's now being questioned.
So it is unclear yet whether or not he was

(02:47):
involved with the group that did this on Friday, or
of this as someone else who's decided to try and
take advantage of it, seeing that someone else has done
this and has also tried to get in on the act.
But now the tejureve, the famous French system, it does
seem to be back up and running at full strength,
because that is the primary way of getting around France
to all the events has come not in Paris for

(03:08):
the Olympics, for the spectators here.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
You should and you should rule am perfectly. I think
you've got some French and you mate.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I might have grown up in Luxembourg for a couple
of years.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
So there you go. And the other thing is you're
in Paris right now, so how's your Olympics.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I am in Paris. It has been a fantastic few days.
I'm sad to go home today. We started with that
opening ceremony. It was unique. It's possibly the best way
to describe it. It was very very wet. I don't
think I've ever been more soaked through.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
And it was very very long.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
It was very very long now as I understand it,
they'd never done a full technical rehearsal, and I think
it overran significantly by about thirty to forty minutes, because
you know, going about on boats isn't the quickest way
of travel sometimes that you're having to sort of wait
for that horse to go through the entire length of
central Paris, and then you know that boat with Serena
and Nadal where they were getting soaked and it was

(04:02):
bumping the wave that had to come back up. So
it was a bit long. I'm glad that I was
just a reporter and managed to watch it for free,
because I'd be a bit disappointed if i'd paid. If
you were in a stadium and you pay, you know,
you see everything in the round, don't you see the
whole couple of hours. Whereas the people that I was
with that had paid tickets, they could just see, you know,
one little bit of a performance, the performance where you

(04:25):
saw the Marie antoinette, so we could sort of see
that building and that was it, and then we saw
the boats of teams of course, but the rest of
the time we were just standing in the rain watching
the big screen to get to get the whole experience.
So that was a little disappointing. But the weather has
turned nice since then and all the events I've been to,
the rugby sevens at the South of France absolutely sold
out electric atmosphere. I think that's been something great actually

(04:47):
that we've had trouble. We know, we had this in
London where there were big seats, patches of seats that
were empty. I think they've cracked down a little bit
on the corporate hospitality. The seats were much more reasonably
priced this time. Every event i've she's been packed. Today.
There are no tickets available apart from handball if you
want to go to anything last minute, but at the
beach volleyball of the Eiffel Tower on Sunday and yesterday

(05:09):
was at roll on Garriss for the tennis. It's been
really well managed, lots of friendly volunteers. They're doing a
real party atmosphere, lots of music and djaying in the
little breaks between sets or in between games of the
sport that you're doing. And the French seems we've really
got on board with it.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Excellent, Okay, Vincent Mecavinnie, I thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
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