Southport taxi driver waited 50 minutes to call police after dropping off killer
Gary Poland failed to contact emergency services despite having ‘enough evidence that he knew what was happening’, inquest hearsGift this article free
22 September 2025 5:34pm BST
The taxi driver who drove Axel Rudakubana to the dance class where he carried out the Southport stabbings waited 50 minutes to call the police, an inquiry has heard.
Gary Poland was at the scene when the initial screams of “audible distress” were heard and the first children fled the building on Hart Street in July 2024.
Despite one of the surviving girls having to change direction to avoid his taxi and dashcam footage showing the manic scene unfolding as he left, he delayed calling emergency services by nearly an hour.
Rudakubana murdered Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, in an attack in which he injured 10 others at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
Failure of ‘moral’ duty
At an inquiry looking into the events leading up to the attack and whether it could have been prevented, Mr Poland was criticised for failing in his “moral” duty to call the police.
At Liverpool Town Hall on Monday, Det Ch Insp Jason Pye, Merseyside Police’s lead investigator into the attack, said a call should have been made earlier.
“Accepting that he had no duty of care, I would like to think that morally a call would have been made,” he said.
“There was enough evidence that he knew what was happening. Yes, we would expect a phone call to come in.”
The hearing was told Mr Poland called police at 12.36pm, some 50 minutes after a dispute with Rudakubana over paying his fare and the “first sign of audible distress” at 11.46am.
When he eventually called 999, he said: “I’m a taxi driver, I’m just ringing in. The lad who did it, I picked him up.
“I’m just a bit shook up, I can’t believe it. My heart’s going like I don’t know what.”
The inquiry heard new details from the transcript of Mr Poland’s call, where he said Rudakubana hadn’t said anything during the journey and had been “very, very odd, like he had a plan”.
“I was just about to drive off then I heard… screaming, proper screaming,” he said.
“I thought, ‘What’s that?’ Then there were young people coming down the steps, like running down.”
Mr Poland said he saw children, whom he estimated were aged between six and eight, coming down the steps and into the car park.
“That’s when I shot off,” he told the operator.
Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the public inquiry, told the hearing that Mr Poland “wasn’t to know” Leanne Lucas, who led the class, had already called the police, when he decided to wait 50 minutes.
Ms Lucas was praised for doing so at 11.46am, allowing officers to arrive by 11.56am.
But Mr Poland’s delay came despite his own rear dashcam footage showing girls coming out of the building, as Mr Moss added: “You can hear the screaming of the children through his dashcam.”
Mr Poland ‘sorry’ for hesitation
The inquiry has previously heard the families of victims have “raised concerns” about Mr Poland’s conduct.
He later told police he was “sorry” and admitted he should have checked on the welfare of the children and helped, but thought that he was in danger after shouting at Rudakubana to pay his fare and was “in complete shock”.
However, the inquiry previously heard he took another fare and made a number of phone calls before calling the police.
Mr Poland will give his own evidence later this week.
The inquiry also heard that the first responding police officers entered the scene to disarm Rudakubana after pausing for just six seconds.
Sgt Greg Gillespie was armed with only a baton when a member of the public told him “you need a f—— gun mate, that’s doing nothing”.
The hearing was told Sgt Gillespie asked for a Taser officer to attend but he and two other officers refused to wait for backup before entering the building and eventually detaining the attacker.
DCI Pye told the inquiry: “At no point could anyone have imagined what they were going to be faced with.”
He was joined by Pc Luke Holden and PCSO Timothy Parry.
“Greg asked, is he ready to go in? And with very, very little delay, they enter,” he continued.
The inquiry was told Rudakubana had saved the postcode of the dance class and the address as separate contacts in his phone “so he could remember where it was he needed to go on that day.”
The inquiry heard he was likely carrying the knife in his green hooded jumper.
Rudakubana was 17 when he stabbed three children to death and attempted to kill eight others, who cannot be named for legal reasons, Ms Lucas and John Hayes, a businessman who intervened.
He was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January. He was handed 13 life sentences for three murders and 10 attempted murders.
The inquiry continues.
