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A dance teacher who survived a knife attack in Southport last summer has started a campaign calling for pointed kitchen knives to be replaced by ones with blunt tips.
Leanne Lucas, 36, was critically injured in the attack at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class she was leading during last year’s school summer holidays.
Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 when he carried out the attack, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years for the murder of three young girls, Alice Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King, and the attempted murder of several others, including Lucas.
In an interview with Sky News, Lucas said it was the pointed tip of the knife that caused injuries that led to her “nearly dying”.
She said she has not cooked with a pointed kitchen knife since last July’s attack, and that using knives with blunt tips makes her feel safer.
“When I’m maybe with friends or family and they’re cooking away and we’re having a conversation, I’ve noticed I’m watching what they’re doing, rather than listening,” she told BBC News, adding that kitchen knives had become a “trigger” for feelings of hypervigilance she has experienced since the attack.
“When this idea about the blunt-tip knives came in I just thought: this is a no-brainer, I don’t understand why our kitchen isn’t safer in the first place,” she said.
The Let’s Be Blunt campaign hopes to shift public attitudes and change behaviours, with Lucas comparing it to other public health initiatives, such as the indoor smoking ban.
“We just want to form that education,” she said. “We want to bring that awareness to light.”
Cutlery manufacturer Viners has been selling blunt-tipped knives since 2020, alongside more traditional pointed knives.
Jamie O’Brien, chief executive of the Rayware Group which owns Viners, said: “Knife crime is obviously a very complex issue and a complex societal issue.
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“Our product won’t change that but what we believe is [that] design can make simple steps to dramatically improve safety, just as with seatbelts or with safety lids on kids’ medicines.”
The actor Idris Elba has previously called for a ban on pointed kitchen knives, and has been backed by the celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
According to data from the Office for National Statistics, kitchen knives are most commonly used in homicides where a knife is used as a weapon.
“You normally hear of the zombie knives, machetes, things like that,” Lucas told Sky News. “They sound dangerous but really, when you look at the figures, the highest figure is the domestic kitchen knife, which we have all got in our kitchen, which we use daily.”
