Was the suspect in the Southport, England, knife attack in July 2024 an immigrant? No, that's not true: The 17-year-old suspect was born in Cardiff, Wales, said Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy. Wales is part of the United Kingdom. No evidence or credible reports support the immigrant claim.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, by social media influencer Andrew Tate on July 29, 2024. The video's caption said:
ILLEGAL MIGRANT STABS 6 LITTLE GIRLS.
WAKE UP.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue July 30 13:03:45 2024 UTC)
Tate, in his social media post, provided no evidence to support his unproven claims that the suspect in the Southport, England, knife attack on July 29, 2024, is an "illegal migrant" or an "undocumented migrant." Neither is true.
The video
In addition to his caption that claims "ILLEGAL MIGRANT STABS 6 LITTLE GIRLS," Tate's narration in the video follows a similar tone. He says:
So, an undocumented migrant decided to go to a Taylor Swift dance class today and stabbed six little girls. It's probably somebody who arrived in the UK on a boat. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody knows where he's from.
The media is, of course, hiding the fact that this is a 17-year-old male because they don't want to highlight how ridiculous it is that they be allowed, military-aged males, combatants, to flood our shores.
Merseyside Police
Contrary to Tate's claim, Merseyside Police identified the suspect on July 29, 2024, the same day the knife attack took place. Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said the following in a statement on the department's website :
A 17-year-old male from Banks [England] in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder and has been taken to a police station where he will be interviewed by detectives
In a July 30, 2024, email to Lead Stories, Merseyside News Officer Paul Turp echoed his chief, saying this about the suspect:
He was born in Cardiff so the narrator, Andrew Tate, is inaccurate.
The suspect is in custody at this time so there is nothing to add at this stage.
At the time of writing, three girls had died in the knife attack on a U.K. dance class and seven people were critically wounded, news reports said.
