Southport victim's mum's vow as she reveals surviving daughter 'turns off Taylor Swift songs' now

Southport victim's mum's vow as she reveals surviving daughter 'turns off Taylor Swift songs' now The mum of Southport victim Elsie Dot Stancombe has revealed the heartbreaking moment she realised her daughter was never coming home as she opened up about life after the attack The mum of Southport victim Elsie Dot Stancombe has vowed not to let the killer “ruin another one” of her daughters’ lives. Jenni Stancombe has revealed how her five-year-old daughter switches off Taylor Swift songs following the Southport attack that killed her sister. The youngster, who was just three when seven-year-old Elsie was murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year, now refuses to listen to the singer whose music was playing on the day of the attack. Speaking on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum podcast, Jenni said: “When Taylor swift comes on, she turns it off, she doesn’t like Taylor swift very much anymore. I’ve never said anything to her, and I’m like how do you know these things?” Despite the lasting trauma, Jenni said she and husband David, whom she affectionately calls Day, had made a promise to give their youngest daughter as normal a childhood as possible. She said: “Me and Day both committed to that, that we have to try and give her as normal life as possible. “I will not let that person [Rudakubana] ruin another one of my daughter’s lives. He took one away from me. I will not give him the satisfaction of ruining another.” But Jenni never would’ve believed she would have been forced to make that vow. Before that day, she believed she had “won the lottery of life”. Speaking through tears, she said: “I used to say I’d won the lottery of life. I had two beautiful healthy little girls. I had a good job, I enjoyed my job. I had the best husband. We’d moved to what I classed as our forever home. I’d won the lottery of life, I wanted for nothing. People say you could always want more, I didn’t want nothing else.” Elsie was remembered by her mum as an emotionally intelligent and articulate little girl who threw herself into everything she did. Jenni reflected on Elsie loving school and being chosen by her classmates to sit on school council. Outside of school, Elsie enjoyed many activities, from swimming, gymnastics to cheerleading and competed in her first cheer competition just three months before death. Jenni said: “She loved it. Speak about what she wanted to be when she grows up, she was like ‘I want to be a fashion designer by day but I was to be a cheer coach at night’ they were her two things.” Prior the horrific ordeal, Jenni had meticulously planned the school holidays, creating a spreadsheet packed with activities for her daughters. She had taken every Monday off work, so she could spend time with just her and Elsie. “I thought she starts preschool in the September, and I’d never get that time back with Elsie, just me and her. So we can have those Monday’s together while her sister's still at private nursery.” The Taylor Swift dance class was the only Monday that summer she and David had planned to spend together. After asking Elsie whether she wanted to go, Jenni dropped her off and watched on as her daughter ran off. Not long afterwards, the family received a devastating phone call. Jenni said: “I got a phone call that said something bad was happening, and I needed to get there. I remember I screamed, Day knew from the scream.” "When we got there it was chaos,” Jenni said. “Someone walked passed me and he spoke to Day, then Day just knelt down in front of me.” Elsie was among three girls murdered when Axel Rudakubana entered the dance class armed with a knife. Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were also killed, while eight other children and two adults were injured. Rudakubana was later sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 52 years. Jenni remembered sitting in the back of an ambulance surrounded by devastated emergency workers. She said: “I remember I was in the back of an ambulance, and I don’t think they knew what to do with us. They [emergency services] were broken. These people around me were absolutely broken.” “I remember their faces, you’re not built as human beings to witness that regardless of the job that you do," she added. That evening, she went to her brother’s home, unable to face returning to the family house, and repeatedly showered as she struggled to comprehend what had happened. “I couldn’t go home, at this point I didn’t feel like it was [real],” she said. The finality of Elsie’s death only truly hit when a news alert carrying her daughter’s photograph appeared on her phone. She said: “I still had alerts on my phone, when something comes through on the news and it comes through, I couldn’t tell you exactly what it said. And an Elsie picture was released, that was the moment I realised she’d gone. I knew at that point she wasn’t coming back. They hadn’t got it wrong.” “There was no time to grieve, there was no time to come to terms in what had happened,” she said. Two days after Elsie’s death, her younger sister asked where she was. Jenni told her that Elsie had “gone to heaven with Nana Tina”. When the little girl asked why, Jenni replied: “A bad man hurt her, but it wasn’t her fault. She did nothing wrong. Don’t ever think she did anything wrong because she did nothing wrong.” In the weeks that followed, the mum shared how the youngster would sometimes fall to the floor and let out what Jenni described as a wail, repeatedly asking when Elsie was coming back. She continuously asked whether her family was safe. Jenni tried to reassure her by saying Rudakubana was being watched by 200 police officers - and when she asked what happened while they slept, her mum told her another 200 took over. Although she still turns Taylor Swift songs off, Jenni said her youngest daughter has continued dancing and recently competed in her first cheerleading competition, with both parents remaining by her side every step of the way. Jenni added: “My life was absolutely ruined that day - nothing will ever make it better - ever - nothing. But we’re still a mum, still a dad and that’s to Elsie as much as it is her sister, you know I’ve got a duty to Elsie." Breaking down, she said: “Her sister has saved us - she’s saved us both. Me and David."