A man who tried to apprehend the Southport killer said he thought he was “dying at every stage” after being stabbed in a scene of “horror”.

Jonathan Hayes, speaking at the inquiry into the attack, told of his “terror” as he witnessed Axel Rudakubana wielding a bloodied 20cm kitchen knife.

“That quickly turned to horror as I witnessed critically injured children and began to realise what was happening. I grappled with the attacker and fell to the floor,” he said.

“Initially I didn’t even know I had been stabbed but when I looked down, I saw blood pouring out of my leg.”

Hayes, a businessman whose office was in the same building as the Taylor Swift-themed holiday club, said he thought Rudakubana might “finish me off” but instead colleagues came to his aid, using a makeshift tourniquet to stem the blood loss.

He said he was “pretty sure that saved my life” and that the pain was overwhelming.

The inquiry is examining missed opportunities to prevent the killing of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and the attempted murder of 10 others on 29 July last year.

Giving evidence at Liverpool town hall on Monday, Hayes said it “seemed like an age” before police and paramedics arrived, counting about 15 minutes where he heard the “carnage” outside.

The 64-year-old was still conscious as he was carried out of the building on a stretcher. The hall was “like something from a horror movie”, he said. “It was like someone had painted the walls red.”

He added: “My overriding feeling was one of fear; I thought I was dying at every stage; whilst on the floor in the office, on the stretcher, in the road and in the ambulance. That anxiety didn’t diminish until I was at hospital. Only when in hospital did I feel safe.”

Hayes described being rushed to Aintree hospital in what felt like seconds. His wife, Helen, met him there and recalled him telling her: “I tried to help her, I tried to help her.”

The inquiry chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, also heard evidence from the parents of three girls who witnessed the atrocity and one who was injured.

The mother of one of the girls, whose best friend was murdered, said her daughter was “haunted” by a “deep heavy grief that she cannot name but she still feels”.

She said they had been called “lucky” because her daughter survived, but that this “dismisses a lifetime of scars” and that “lucky would be having the little girl I had before”.

“Both of us are haunted, powerless, because it turns out monsters really do exist. There is no end to this, no release,” she said. “There is no healing that will bring things back to how they were. No outcome will take away the pain.”

She said her daughter, who can only be identified as Child U, had been “fun-loving and wonderfully silly” but was now changed for ever.

The little girl could not speak about the attack and even saying her murdered friend’s name was too painful, she said: “The dreams my daughter had for her and her friend are gone for ever. The dreams I had for them, the milestones they were meant to share, will now be marked with grief not celebration.”

The mother of another of the girls urged the inquiry to “demand real answers” about “why was this allowed to happen”.

“Why was no action taken? What change is coming, not in theory but in practice?” she asked. “How many more lives will be destroyed before the system takes responsibility?

“This inquiry is the chance, maybe the only chance, to demand real answers, to expose every failing and to force meaningful and lasting change. You must take this chance and you must be the change.”