Window cleaner reveals how he risked own life to save kids in Southport attack
A heroic window cleaner who helped save injured children during the Southport knife attacks has spoken of his ordeal.
Marcin Tyjon, 41, was one of the first people at the scene last July and even gave CPR to a young victim after she was attacked by Axel Rudakubana while attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
He and his colleague Joel Verite were driving down the road on the day of the attacks when they came across a bleeding woman and terrified children running down the street.
They ran to the nearby Hart Space, where Rudakubana was in the midst of a stabbing spree, and provided care to the stricken children until emergency services arrived.
‘Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bleeding woman lying on the pavement, leaning against the car,’ Marcin told the Sun.
‘We stopped, backed up and she started screaming.
‘She started saying that there was someone inside and killing children.’
Although three children – Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, died during the attack, other children – and adults survived thanks in part to Marcin and Joel’s interventions.
He added: ‘Everyone was screaming.’
‘People started running from the area, neighbours, they started bringing towels.
‘Someone took care of one girl, and I took care of the first one, then Joel brought out another girl and another one.
‘I didn’t even know that the attacker was inside,’ he added.
‘We were in such a state of shock, in such a frenzy to save these children, that we didn’t even have time to speak to each other.
‘From what Joel later told me, the perpetrator was standing on the landing.
‘Joel didn’t make a move toward him, he just took care of the children and brought them out one by one.’
Marcin later gave a statement about the event to Merseyside Police, which helped investigators charge Rudakubana with three counts of murder. He later pleaded guilty to the charges, along with 10 additional counts of attempted murder, during the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday.
Yet despite his heroic efforts, Marcin says he still wonders if he could’ve done more.
‘I don’t know. I tried,’ he told the Sun.
Investigators revealed Rudakubana was reported to anti-terror programme Prevent three times before the Southport massacre. The first instance occurred in 2019 when he was aged just 13 years old after he showed a morbid fascination with a school massacre.
In addition to the murder charges, Rudakubana also pleaded guilty to one charge of the ‘production of a biological toxin, namely ricin, contrary to Section 1 of the Biological Weapons Act 1974’.
This relates to an Al-Qaeda manual and ricin that were found at his home following the attack.