Mounting pressure for probe into police over killing spree
A SECOND police force failed to act on red flags around Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane after he assaulted two of his colleagues just five weeks before his violent spree, it emerged yesterday.
Pressure was growing on the Government to launch an inquiry into the attacks yesterday as Sir Keir Starmer backed calls for a probe.
The Labour leader’s intervention came after a three-day sentencing hearing was told Calocane had repeatedly come to the attention of Nottinghamshire police in the months and years leading up to last summer’s rampage.
And yesterday it was revealed Leicestershire Police officers had also been called about Calocane – five weeks before he ‘ brutally and mercilessly’ stabbed to death 19-year-old students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber and grandfather Ian Coates, 65.
The force said officers were sent to supply chain firm Arvato’s warehouse in Kegworth after Calocane assaulted two colleagues on May 5 last year, on only his fifth day of employment.
When officers arrived, he had already been escorted from the premises. He had secured the job through a recruitment consultant, who had his details, Nottingham Crown Court heard. A force spokesman refused to explain why Calocane – who already had a warrant out for his arrest over an attack on a Nottinghamshire police constable – was not tracked down and arrested, or whether it was even aware of the warrant. The spokesman said: ‘Our inquiries to establish the full circumstances of the report concerning the incident in Kegworth were ongoing at the time the incident in Nottingham occurred.’
The Nottinghamshire force also had at least three other dealings with Calocane, arresting him twice for criminal damage in May 2020 and being called when he assaulted his flatmate in January 2022. Barnaby’s mother Emma Webber, 51, on Thursday condemned Nottinghamshire Police for failing to act on the September 2022 warrant. ‘You have blood on your hands’, she said. ‘If you had just done your jobs properly there’s a very good chance my beautiful boy would be alive today.’
She last night called for a public inquiry to establish whether the killer could have been stopped, a call backed by Sir Keir. The Labour leader told ITV’s This Morning he is ‘very worried by what appear to be a number of points at which action could have been taken that would have prevented this happening’.