Joel Verite, 26, carried one girl from the dance studio where Axel Rudakubana unleashed horror
A hero dad who came face-to-face with Axel Rudakubana and carried a victim from the dance studio he targeted said the ‘horror will live with him forever’.
Joel Verite recalled being 6ft from the killer as he wielded a 20cm blade at the Taylor Swift-themed dance event in Southport last July.
The 26-year-old had been on a break from helping his friend with his window-cleaning business when they stopped for a coffee.
They had set out on the road again when they noticed a ‘commotion’, spotting yoga teacher Leanne Lucas slumped against a car.
Dad-of-two Joel said: “I jumped out of the van and went up to her. She just shouted “he’s stabbing kids in there”. She pointed towards where the studio was.
“I didn’t understand what was going on but I saw a big wound on her shoulder and realised something serious was happening.
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“She was on the phone to the police. She stood up and pointed to where it was and then collapsed on the floor.
“I picked up her phone and said to the police “this woman has been hurt and you need to get here as fast as you can”.”
The personal trainer said he was running towards the studio when another woman was beeping her car horn, The Sun reports.
There were ‘four or five’ girls in the car, with the woman asking Joel “can you please get this girl out?”.
Joel said he picked the girl out of the car and started ‘screaming for help’, with his friend then performing CPR on her.
He later found out this girl was Alice da Silva Aguiar, the nine-year-old killed by Rudakubana.
Joel said he took his T-shirt off to help stem the blood, adding: “It was something you would see in a horror film.”
The dad said he then went into the studio, spotting ‘blood everywhere on the staircase’.
He said: “I’ve got halfway up the staircase and I’m shouting “hello, hello”. I couldn’t hear any noise.
“I looked up and literally he’s come and circled round and looked at me.
“He’s on the top of the landing, looking at me on the staircase, and he’s scurried back off into the room.
“He had his hood up and a big kitchen knife.
“I’m literally kind of frozen and I’m standing on the stairs and was like “what the f*** do I do?”.
“It’s easy for people to think “I would have done this and that” when you watch films.
“But I’ll tell you now, until you’re in that situation, you think very differently.”
Joel added: “What I witnessed was like a scene from a disaster movie. The horror will live with me forever.”
He used a bin to smash the glass door so Rudakubana could not lock the building shut.
Police arrived and Joel followed them in, watching on in horror as they managed to ‘tackle’ Rudakubana.
As they did, Joel scooped up another young girl, who he later learned was six-year-old Bebe King – another of Rudakubana’s victims.
He said: “There’s a young girl on the floor and I pick her up, and I’m running as fast as I can towards the road, shouting for help.”
Paramedics arrived and started to tend to the casualties.
Joel added: “He doesn’t deserve any breath out of my body, he doesn’t even deserve a name, which is why I’m not saying it.
“But he definitely doesn’t deserve to be alive.”
Rudakubana admitted murdering Bebe, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice, nine.
He also admitted ten attempted murders, possession of a knife, deadly toxin and a terrorist document.
The 18-year-old was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 52 years, last month.