A third child has died in Southport.

[Conniebygaslight]

Incomprehensible and senseless. Absolutely devastating. 💔💔💔

This is dreadful. What a sad week this is. Gold bless and look after those sweet Angels, and God help their families in the aftermath of all this.

By reading stuff online.
watching videos
listening to podcasts
Whatever method others use to spread the disgusting stuff they believe in.
Holly Willoughby would be kidnapper spent hours in chat rooms with men who all had the same sick perversions.
No idea how we stop it.

Absolutely heartbreaking

Utterly awful for everyone

No way 😱

Yes, the Mail has it's faults but to be honest it does sometimes show a different perspective and report on stories you wouldn't otherwise see.

You can't just read one news source and expect to have everything. They are all biased in some way.

Many years ago I used to run holiday workshops with a colleague, for exactly the same age group. On a hot day we would prop a door open, and have a volunteer mum or trustee sitting by it to prevent any children wandering off. Never once did we expect anyone to come in to cause harm.

How easily it could have happened is very chilling, yet we cannot keep our children in fortresses. I do not know what the answer is.

My thoughts are with the families. RIP.

Maybe. But as the other poster said, it's weird how they go for victims who are unable to fight back. Which suggests to me there is at least a degree of control involved. The victims aren't chosen at random.

I've done exactly the same myself UtterlyOtterly.

Yes, this. If it was truly a psychotic episode with no control then he wouldn't have chosen his victims to be primary aged children and made deliberate travel plans. From reports, he was mentally well enough to order a taxi and travel to this specific child event. Nope, not an excuse. I don't care if he's mentally ill, it doesn't excuse it. Hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people in this country and they don't go around doing this.

Some things are so evil, and require some premeditation, so mental health is not an excuse.

Not weird, it's selection bias. Cases where potential victims fight back and no one is seriously hurt barely get a line on the local news.

Why?

I'm not bragging or boasting that I still have my child. I'm trying to show empathy.

Stay pissed off, I guess.

I'm more pissed off that somebody is trying to label the killer as just a suspect, not the murderer he is.

Shocking beyond comprehension. I hope the victims families are inundated with care & professional support.

Yes, mental health care needs to be better but 100s of thousands of people in this country have mental health problems, and don't go around doing this.

This was at least to some extent premeditated and it would have been very different if he'd attacked a workshop of male bodybuilders. He chose his victims deliberately. I don't care how mentally ill he is, it would never, ever excuse this. It's evil.

People need to be accountable for their actions, a society where all too often this isn't the case (e.g. Wayne Couzens for years of sleazy behaviour and at least one criminal act completely ignored by police shortly before killing Sarah Everard) is a country where this sort of thing happens because the person responsible hasn't been made accountable earlier.

I know that. I was being ironic, obviously it's not weird at all.

Utterly heartbreaking. Those precious girls.

I was on X yesterday and to be completely fair, within an hour of this news breaking, there were absolutely loads of people saying 'if you heard about this and your first thought was to wonder about the race, religion or immigration status of the attacker, then you are a racist prick and you should be ashamed. Children have died. Have some respect.'

Except that clearly their first thought upon hearing this awful news was 'Oh God, I hope this wasn't a Muslim / black person / immigrant / asylum seeker because it will play right into the hands of racist Reform types.

And they've dashed straight onto X to reprimand anyone for daring to wonder the same thing they were wondering.

And there was a meme knocked up in record quick time yesterday on X, literally within two hours. It was a photo of a fat, bald, tattooed white bloke in a Reform vest and England flag boxer shorts, glued to the TV with a big smile on his face and the caption read something like 'Gammons hoping the Southport Sicko will be black and Muslim.'

So all these holier-than-thou people who want everyone else to have more respect and not to use the tragedy to further a political agenda, don't feel any great need to more respect themselves, do they? They are straight onto X for the retweets, so they can bask in their smug, virtue signalling glow. And of course we are in no doubt as to their political agenda.

Maybe that poster isn't able to do that.

We all have our personal reasons as to why certain things effect us the way they do. There will always be a reason.

That’s quite a reach.

Do you not suppose that people may have posted the above comments after reading many, many posts within minutes of the attacks blaming asylum seekers/islamist extremists?

Are you really implying that some people, without any provocation at all, just randomly posted the examples you’ve given above?

Sorry, not buying it. Nice try though.

Yes that is exactly what I am implying and I don't think it's a reach AT ALL. I think it's exactly how those people's minds worked.

I just got back from picking my two primary aged children up from holiday club. Yesterday the gate was open so I could just walk in to collect. Today it was locked and I had to wait outside.

You can't compare a public cinema or park where children will visit randomly to a children's event in a dance studio, church hall, or sports hall, which is advertised or is generally a weekly event.

Hassle is probably more likely to come from a parent who's being denied access to their child, but all it takes is for a carelessly shared group photo with team badge or scout / guide neckie and a Google search to figure out that Child A is in X team/group who meet at Y venue at Z time.

I think it’s natural if you’re part of a minority group that is often scapegoated and negatively stereotyped to hope a perpetrator isn’t one of your own. Think of lynchings in the southern US states. You are so much more visible than the majority population.

Those three beautiful little girls..truly heartbreaking. Just think about the girls families, the injured and first responders …what a terrible tragedy.

I am struggling to comprehend exactly what's happened here. I am so sorry to the victims and their families. I don't know what else to say 💜 poor babies.