Jail EVERYBODY caught carrying a knife in the street
Grace’s parents demand ministers tackle ‘epidemic’
THE PARENTS of one of the two students ‘ mercilessly’ stabbed to death by a paranoid schizophrenic during a city-wide rampage yesterday called for automatic prison terms for carrying a knife.
‘Heroic’ Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, died from multiple stab wounds alongside fellow University of Nottingham student Barnaby Webber, also 19, after the pair were set upon by Valdo Calocane, 32, as they walked home from a nightclub last June.
Yesterday her parents Sinead O’Malley and Dr Sanjoy Kumar said there needed to be a ‘massive deterrent’ against using knives, and called on the Government to ‘urgently’ address the issue.
They spoke out as Nottinghamshire Police admitted officers ‘should have done more’ to arrest Calocane, who was wanted for arrest at the time of the rampage.
Calocane’s barrister told a court that the police, the NHS and the University of Nottingham, from where Calocane had graduated a year before the killings, were all aware of his behaviour.
His pleas of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility were accepted at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday.
Ms O’Malley, a consultant anaesthetist, said carrying a knife was ‘no different’ to carrying a gun.
She told BBC Breakfast: ‘I believe there has to be mandatory prison sentences for carrying a knife.
‘It is not just an offensive weapon
‘It feels like nothing is being done about it’
or something you could eat your food with. It is a lethal weapon.’
Dr Kumar, a GP, described knife crime in England as an ‘ epidemic’, and said ‘it feels like nothing is being done about it’.
There is currently no minimum sentence for people caught carrying a knife for the first time. Whether or not a prison sentence is imposed depends on culpability, harm or aggravating and mitigating factors.
For those aged over 18, a minimum sentence of six months’ custody applies if someone has been caught with a knife before. The maximum penalty is either four years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
For 16 and 17-year-olds, the equivalent is a four-month detention order.
Yesterday Calocane’s barrister referred to a litany of incidents where he came to the attention of the authorities in the three years leading up to his killing spree – yet he was continually released.
Peter Joyce KC said: ‘ The police knew how he was behaving because they took him to the mental hospital several times.
‘The doctors knew how he was behaving because they had him in their care several times. The nurses saw it several times.’ He added that there had been an incident when the university also referred Calocane to mental health services.
He said that by the time of the killings last June Calocane had been ‘wanted on warrant for nine months in this very city’ for the assault of a police officer. ‘And what was the police officer doing when he was arrested? He was trying to detain him under the Mental Health Act,’ he added.
He urged the judge to impose a hospital order, and not a whole life order.
Mr Justice Turner could alternatively sentence Calocane to a ‘ hybrid’ life sentence which would see Calocane continue to be treated in a secure hospital, but allows for the possibility of transferring him to prison if his mental health improves.
Calocane will be sentenced for three counts of manslaughter and three counts of attempted murder today.