By Marc Waddington

Copyright bbc

Nicholas Bowen KC said Rudakubana had walked through “unlocked doors” to murder and maim children using an £8.39 kitchen knife he had bought from Amazon.

He said responsibility fell not only on public bodies failing to protect public safety but also on the killer’s family, who knew but ignored the risk he posed.

Mr Bowen told the hearing but for multiple failures, the families of Bebe, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice Aguiar believed the killer “could have and should have been stopped.”

The hearing was told no one state agency, either in police, schools, health or social services had the “full picture”, but none had “joined the dots”.

Mr Bowen cited the incident two years before the attack when the teenager, who was referred to anti-terror government intervention programme Prevent three times, was reported missing by his family and found by police on a bus, carrying a knife.

He said it likely if a full assessment had taken place, then authorities would have discovered the increasing risk he posed, his purchase of knives and weapons online and the aggression he was displaying at the family home he shared with his parents, in Banks, near Southport.

The killer’s brother, Dion, was said to have had “limited interaction” with his younger sibling in the years running up to the attack.

But he was said to have been aware that police and other services were involved with him.

He “wishes the inquiry to explore whether more could have been done by those agencies” to prevent or minimise the risk of the attacks, a statement read to the inquiry said.