A teenager inspired by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana planned a copycat attack on a children’s dance school and planned to bomb the first Oasis reunion gig in Cardiff.

McKenzie Morgan, 18, from Cwmbran, Torfaen, has been sentenced to 14 months in a young offenders institute, after pleading guilty to possession of an al-Qaeda training manual.

Morgan said he wanted to carry out a “Rudakubana-style attack”, claimed he was trying to make ricin [a highly dangerous toxin] and sent an image of a large knife for sale to a friend, saying “would this work”.

He was initially arrested on 2 June 2025 after the police were contacted by an individual who was worried by what they had seen on Snapchat.

Prosecutor Corinne Bramwell told Morgan’s sentencing hearing at London’s Old Bailey court that the teen told a psychiatric nurse on the morning of his arrest in June that he “planned to commit a Rudakubana-style terrorist attack” and had been researching how to stab people, Bramwell told Morgan’s sentencing hearing at London’s Old Bailey court.

The teenager twice tried to buy a 15-centimetre (6-inch) kitchen knife from Amazon, searched online for local playgrounds and a youth dance academy and put the academy on a document on his mobile phone entitled “places to attack”, Bramwell added.

She said Morgan later told another Snapchat user that he planned to bomb the Oasis Concert in Cardiff last July 4, the band’s first gig of their comeback tour, and claimed to have tried to make the deadly poison ricin

Morgan was sentenced for one offence of possession of information likely to be of use to a person engaged in terrorism, contrary to section 58(1) of the Terrorism ACT 2000

Judge Sarah Whitehouse 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”.

She said he was a danger to himself and “vulnerable to being bullied, groomed and radicalised”.

Prosecutor Corinne Bramwell said Morgan, who was aged 17 at the time of the offences, was infatuated and inspired by Rudakubana.

Rudakubana was sentenced to told Morgan’s sentencing hearing at London’s Old Bailey court for the murder of three young girls and ten counts of attempted murder during the attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on 29 July 2024. A minimum of 52 years in prison

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, died while eight other children and two adults – dance class leader Leanne Lucas and businessman Jonathan Hayes were seriously wounded.