The families of the three girls who were murdered in Southport on July 29 last year held each other when the verdict and sentence were read out in Liverpool.
The harm (the man) has caused to each individual family, each child, and the entire society is immense and permanent, said Judge Julian Goose when he read out the sentence of life imprisonment, or at least 52 years.
The man, who was only 17 years old when the crimes were committed, admitted in court to, among other things, three murders of girls aged six to nine years and ten attempted murders at a dance event with Taylor Swift music in the small English town.
The 18-year-old has an immigrant background but was born in Wales. His bloody crimes were followed by large-scale violence when false information spread that he was a newly arrived boat refugee.
The violence led to over 1,200 arrests, and many rioters have already been sentenced to prison for up to nine years.
The court did not take into account the riots in the verdict, says Julian Goose, as the 18-year-old "did not cause them". On the other hand, the now convicted murderer had intended to "kill as many as possible", he said according to BBC.
The fact that the 18-year-old does not get life imprisonment without a final date is because he had not turned 18 when he committed the heinous crime.
It's hard to understand why it was carried out, he says about the "unusually extreme violence".
