Nurse ‘gave colleague scissors to defend herself against any Muslims’, tribunal told

A nurse handed a colleague nail scissors to defend herself against a feared attack by Muslims days after the Southport stabbings, a nursing tribunal has found.

Belinda Ellams, an agency nurse, was working at Millbrow Care Home in Cheshire, when she made comments such as Muslims are going to “kill all white people” and “we need to be ready for the Muslims”, according to a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) fitness to practise panel.

The panel found that on August 4 2024, Ms Ellams asked staff to lock the care home’s windows and doors in case “a Muslim” got in.

She was also found to have shown colleagues weighted steel balls, which she demonstrated could be swung to cause injury, as well as sharpened nail scissors that she tried to give to Michelle Isaac, a healthcare assistant.

It came days after Axel Rudakubana, then aged 17, killed three girls at a dance class and tried to murder eight other children as well as two adults in the Southport attack on July 29 of that year.

Ms Isaac told the hearing that Ms Ellams regularly used the term “muzzy” to refer to Muslims.

In a statement, she said: “I recall one day I went for a cigarette break with Belinda whilst we were on shift, and she handed me sharps and a pair of sharpened nails.

“I didn’t take them off her, but she said I should take them in case the ‘muzzys’ come.

“She was deadly serious, but I tried to laugh it off’.

A note Ms Isaac made at the time said she and other colleagues had also been shown “a chain of weighted steel balls”, which Ms Ellams demonstrated could be swung to cause injury, the panel wrote.

Ms Ellams denied the allegations in an email to the NMC in August 2026, saying she was “absolutely appalled by them and how I have been treated”.

She added that she had left nursing because she could no longer work “in such a toxic environment”.

The panel concluded that Ms Ellams’s conduct was motivated by hostility towards Muslims.

It said that her comments suggested “that all Muslims were dangerous and violent”, adding: “This constituted a widely recognised Islamophobic trope.”

The panel also found that Ms Ellams posted an “offensive” image on Facebook on July 30 2024 depicting a Muslim man apparently about to attack a child.

The caption read: “Are you ready to face reality yet? The Government will not help you. They are just allowing the illegal migrants in. They do not care about your lives or your children’s lives.”

After the Southport attacks, Ms Ellams also claimed that “the culprit was a radicalised Muslim” and said “we are gathering an army”, the panel wrote.

Ms Ellams was given an 18-month interim suspension order and will be struck off the nursing register unless she successfully appeals against the decision.