In God’s name, why wasn’t he stopped?
Grace’s killer sectioned four times and forced student to jump out of a window
A LITANY of missed chances left a paranoid schizophrenic free to roam a city before he knifed three people, including an Irish student, to death and tried to kill three more. Valdo Calocane had been in and out of a mental health hospital for more than three years and a warrant was out for his arrest when his killing spree brought terror to Nottingham last summer.
The NHS, police, university officials and even his employer missed at least eight opportunities to deal with the 32-year-old before he ‘brutally and mercilessly’ killed first-year university students Barnaby Webber, 19, and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, whose mother Dr Sinéad O’Malley is from Dublin.
A court yesterday heard he then ‘calmly’ walked across the city to ambush and kill school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, as he travelled to work. Flatmates described Calocane as a ‘ticking timebomb’ and gave him the nickname ‘serial killer’ because of the loner’s unstable nature. As a court accepted his guilty plea to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility yesterday, it emerged his disturbing behaviour repeatedly brought him to the attention of the authorities, with him even being sectioned at least four times.
Yet he was continually released into the community – where he stopped taking his medication and posed an increasing danger. Calocane had also been wanted by police, for attacking an officer, for almost a year by the time of the killings in June last year.
One young woman was so terrified after being followed into her university accommodation that she jumped out of a window to escape. She is said to have suffered severe injuries requiring surgery as a result, while Calocane was eventually sectioned.
Another incident saw Calocane assault and then trap a flatmate in their kitchen in a row over a dirty shower.
It was last night claimed the university had urged police not to charge Calacone over the matter, and he was moved out of the accommodation. The university declined to comment on the ongoing case. It is also understood he attacked two colleagues at the warehouse where he worked, and was banned from the premises.
In a series of heartbreaking victim impact statements, relatives of the victims broke off to address the defendant directly as he sat motionless in the dock at Nottingham Crown Court, surrounded by four guards and nurses.
Earlier, the judge had to call for a brief pause as prosecutor Karim Khalil struggled to contain his emotions. He said the ‘deliberate’ and ‘devastating violence’ he inflicted was captured on CCTV, and described how Grace demonstrated ‘incredible bravery’ to try to fight Calocane off Barnaby, before he ‘turned his attention to her’. Both ended up collapsed on the ground before Calocane then ‘calmly walked away’, the court heard. Grace’s mother Dr Sinéad O’Malley studied at the Royal College of Surgeons and is a past student of Alexandra College. She is a consultant anaesthetist and her father Dr Sanjoy Kumar is a GP.
It was believed that Grace was destined for the medical world, given her family’s lineage. Her grandfather is Professor Kevin O’Malley, 82, the Kildare born former registrar and chief executive of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
Her mother’s great-aunt, Sarah Joyce O’Malley, was the first Irish head of the Association of Anaesthetists in the 1930s.
Grace carried on her mother’s hockey skills and played at underage level for England. Sinéad O’Malley previously said Grace wanted only a few things in life. ‘To be a doctor, to play hockey, and to have fun.’ Her younger brother James said that he has lost his ‘best friend’.
‘Bizarre, dangerous behaviour