'Stop kids killing kids': Mum backs knife checks

The mother of a 12-year-old girl who was stabbed to death by a teenage boy has said knife crime is at "epidemic levels" in the UK.

Ava White died in 2021 after she was stabbed by a 15-year-old in Liverpool city centre in a row over a social media video.

Her mother Leeann is backing the prime minister's promise to introduce tougher measures to stop under-18s buying knives online as part of the response to the murder of three young girls in Southport last summer by Axel Rudakubana.

Ms White said she was angry that she continued to wake up to the news of "kids killing kids" and said: "Enough is enough".

Rudakubana, armed with a knife, went on a "meticulously planned rampage" on 29 July last year killing Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and injuring another 10 victims.

Sir Keir Starmer described the process of buying a knife online as "shockingly easy" after it was revealed that Rudakubana bought a knife from Amazon at the age of 17.

Online retailers will now be told to ask buyers for two types of identification before completing a purchase.

Ms White said she had checked the process of buying a knife online since the announcement and claimed it was still possible to buy a Zombie style-knife online without any ID.

"It's so easy for these kids to be getting hold of these knives," she said.

"I'm really angry.

"I wake up to [the news of] a 12-year-old child in Birmingham that's been murdered, last week it was a 14-year-old on a bus, and those are just the ones that are in the press, there's so much more."

"We can't have kids killing kids."

She said the families of Rudakubana's victims will be in her thoughts on Thursday as he is sentenced, on a day which would have been her daughter's 16th birthday.

"Instead of celebrating and having a party I have to be putting down flowers," she said.

"Even after the zombie knife ban, it's still carrying on, there needs to be a deterrent, enough is enough.

"That's the only way it's going to stop."

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.