A TAXI driver who dropped the Southport murderer off at a children’s dance class and waited 50 minutes before calling 999 has been stripped of his licence.
Gary Poland, 56, heard four or five loud bangs and the screams of fleeing children after he left Axel Rudakubana at Hart Space dance studio on 29 July 2024.
He then drove away “in complete mortal terror and shock” as he feared Rudakubana had a gun and was shooting people.
The Southport Inquiry in September 2025 heard how Mr Poland fled the scene despite seeing screaming children running “like a stampede for their lives”.
Mr Poland, then a driver for One Call Taxis, did not call emergency services until 50 minutes after hearing screams coming from the Taylor Swift-themed holiday club.
Instead he picked up another fare and returned home first.
Mr Poland also told the inquiry, held at Liverpool Town Hall, he had threatened to call the police when Rudakubana ignored his requests to pay his fare, but thought he had gone to get money when he went into the building.
Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked the witness: “Do you accept, as you drove away, children were fleeing alongside your car. And you can be seen looking in the rear view camera?”
“That’s correct,” Mr Poland said, adding: “I did not know anybody was injured. I did not see anybody injured.”
Mr Poland said he regretted it and could still hear their “harrowing“ pleas for help.
A Sefton Council spokesman has said: “This individual no longer holds a taxi driver licence following a review by the local authority.
“A decision was taken that this individual did not meet the appropriate standards set out in Sefton Council’s taxi licensing policy.”
Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were stabbed to death at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
Mr Poland said: “I regret not helping the children. Their screams were harrowing and I can still hear them when I think back to that day.
“I regret not doing more. There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t think about that day and what ifs.
“What if I had called the police? What if I had got out of my car? What if I had apprehended him for not paying me? But I do not know the answers.”
Mr Poland admitted hearing the screams and seeing children running out of the building and said he “just panicked and was not thinking clearly”.
He added: “I can only say that I panicked, and I fled for my own safety. I cannot imagine what the victims and the families of the victims have been through and they have my deepest sympathy for what happened that day.”
As he drove off, Mr Poland said children were running “like a stampede for their lives” and added: “I was in a state of complete mortal terror and shock.”
He told the inquiry: “I just remember seeing the face.
“I can’t sleep at night, I shut my eyes, I see his face, it’s just there all the time in my head.”
However, in a phone call to his friend, who ran the bodyshop recorded on the dashcam, after he pulled up around the corner, Mr Poland said: “I’ve just dropped a lad off, I chased him down your thing. He ran next door and I think he shot some people.
“Do you not hear screaming and shots go off? He’s just f* shot everyone ain’t he?” His friend, Julian Medlock, told him “lucky you weren’t in it” and Mr Poland added: “He shot up stairs and I heard these f* shots and I f shot off. Lucky he didn’t shoot me, weren’t it?”
Among the statements in Sefton Council’s taxi licensing handbook is a call for drivers to dial 999 if they feel a child or young person is in serious danger of immediate harm.
