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A yoga teacher who survived the Southport stabbings has revealed she has not used a kitchen knife for the reason that assault.
Leanne Lucas stated she was left so ‘afraid in my very own kitchen’ by the ordeal of getting to struggle off Axel Rudakubana that she has not cooked for the reason that summer season.
Because the anniversary of the atrocity approaches, she is asking for a ban on pointed kitchen knives to scale back the chance of them ever getting used as a weapon.
Rudakubana was jailed for no less than 52 years in January for the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, on the Taylor Swift-themed workshop within the city on July 29 final yr.
{The teenager} additionally tried to kill eight different kids, in addition to class teacher Ms Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
‘I dwell with my dad and mom on the age of 36 as a result of that’s the place I really feel secure,’ Ms Lucas informed The Instances.
‘I’m hypervigilant and all the time in search of hazard. It crosses my thoughts each minute of the day. It hadn’t occurred right here in Southport earlier than, in order that’s why I’m making an attempt to get this message out: you don’t know the subsequent place it’s going to occur.’
Within the aftermath of the assault, Ms Lucas stated she had learn articles quoting actor Idris Elba and celeb chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall discussing the potential advantages of blunt-tipped knives.
She stated it was the sharp tip of the knife which practically killed her, telling the BBC: ‘When this concept in regards to the blunt-tip knives got here in I simply thought “this can be a no-brainer, I don’t perceive why our kitchen isn’t safer within the first place”.’
Ms Lucas is launching her marketing campaign, Let’s Be Blunt, throughout Knife Crime Consciousness Week to encourage using rounded knives.
‘You usually hear of the zombie knives, machetes, issues like that,’ she informed Sky Information.
‘They sound harmful however actually, whenever you have a look at the figures, the very best determine is the home kitchen knife, which we’ve got all bought in our kitchen, which we use each day.
‘Clearly, individuals can damage individuals in some ways. It’s about decreasing that chance to trigger life-damaging, life-threatening accidents that may take individuals’s lives.’
There have been round 50,000 offences involving a pointy instrument within the yr ending March 2024, in response to the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics (ONS).
A pointy instrument was the most typical methodology of murder in England and Wales throughout the identical interval, accounting for 262 deaths. Kitchen knives had been utilized in greater than 100 of them.
‘We have to all get on board as a member of most people and say we’re not OK with the rise in knife crime, and we wish to play a tiny half in the direction of stopping future knife crime, Ms Lucas informed the BBC.
‘I can’t now “unsee” what’s within the kitchen, so I’ve bought to do one thing about that. And I feel that’s the motion we’re making an attempt to create.”’
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