A teenager who planned to attack an Oasis concert and a dance school after being inspired by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been locked up for 14 months.
McKenzie Morgan, 18, told friends he was planning to attack the concert in Cardiff on July 4, and had a note targeting the dance club near his home, the Old Bailey heard.
The teenager, from Cwmbran, South Wales, told friends he planned to target the concert in Cardiff on July 4, and had a note targeting the dance club near his home, the Old Bailey heard.
He also praised Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana in Snapchat messages, saying he wanted to engage in a similar terrorist-style attack and was trying to make the deadly poison ricin last spring.
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One Snapchat user reported the messages to the police, and Morgan was referred to children’s mental health services.
He then told a psychiatric nurse on June 2 that he wanted to hurt others, and he planned to commit a Rudakubana-style terrorist attack.
Officers arrested him and seized his electronic devices and mobile phones, on which the terrorist manual was found.
Further examination revealed that last April, Morgan had sent a message asking ‘how to burn people’s faces’.
He had stated: ‘In my head I now have the motivation to go ahead with some sort of attack.’
He also sent a picture of a 15cm kitchen knife advertised on Amazon to another Snapchat user with the question: ‘Would this work?’
Morgan, who was also aged 17 at the time of the offences, previously pleaded guilty to possessing a document useful for terrorism.
In a police interview, Morgan admitted having read the terror manual and said he had sent Snapchat messages because he was ‘bored’.
He denied trying to make ricin or intending to attack his school, the dance academy or the Oasis concert and he only meant ‘to shock’.
On Friday, Judge Sarah Whitehouse KC sentenced him at the Old Bailey to 14 months in youth detention.
She imposed a criminal behaviour order to supervise him upon his release from youth detention and a further year on licence.
The judge said Morgan was a danger to himself and ‘vulnerable to being bullied, groomed and radicalised’.
She told the court there was no clear evidence that Morgan held any political, religious or racial ideology and his motivation appeared to be to ’emulate the Southport terrorist attacker’.
Mitigating, Michael Stradling pointed out the teenager had no history of violence and asserted the greater risk was of self-harm or the defendant suffering harm at the hands of others.
The barrister said: ‘I asked him what he wants to say and what I would described as a true heartfelt manner he said that he wanted you to know that he is very sorry.’
Morgan could not be identified previously during the trial because of his age, but the restriction was lifted on his 18th birthday.
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