"This is appalling' An act of horrific violence - then the mob arrived

After the singing and dancing, there was screaming.

- Josh Halliday, Robyn Vinter

And then silence. Paramedics and firefighters crouched, ashen-faced, struggling to process the horror they had witnessed.

The blue lights of their vehicles continued to flash two hours after the atrocity but their sirens were turned off, like an emergency on mute. The only sound was from the police helicopter above.

Days later, Southport remains in a state of trauma. Many are struggling to come to terms not only with the barbarity of Monday's attack, which left three girls dead, but also with how its grief was so violently infringed upon a day later.

"There is a sense of horror and disbelief," said the Rev Marie-Anne Kent, whose church, St Philip and St Paul with Wesley, is around the corner from the Hart Space, the yoga studio where the murders took place. Kent, a Methodist minister, was speaking on the frontline of Tuesday's riot, wearing her clerical collar, when a masked man shouted in her face: "Don't let Muslims in. They need to fuck off out of our country." Horrified and shaken, she said: "I came down to pray for our Muslim brothers and sisters. This is appalling. This isn't Southport. This isn't Southport."

Speaking yesterday, after the violence had spread to other towns and cities across England with further far-right rallies planned at the weekend, Kent said Southport was "holding our breath". "The events of Monday were horrific. No community should have to go through that, and for that to be compounded by a hate crime..." she said, at a loss for words.

Summer is when Southport comes alive. The seafront would have been filled with day-trippers enjoying the rides at Pleasureland and the miniature trains on the promenade, when a teenager walked into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class shortly before midday on Monday. Using a kitchen knife, he lunged at the girls. Neighbours heard screams. Parents arriving to pick up their children were met with their bloodied bodies falling out into the street.