Police admit failing to act months before stabbings

Nottingham police say they should have done more to arrest attacker Valdo Calocane

POLICE in Nottingham have admitted they could have done more to arrest an attacker who was on the run for nine months before he killed three people.

Valdo Calocane took the lives of university students Barnaby Webber, Grace O’malley-kumar, both 19, and 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates during a series of violent attacks in Nottingham city centre on June 13 last year.

Calocane, 32, originally from Guinea-bissau, is being sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility.

Before proceedings began, it emerged that he was wanted by police at the time of the killings over an alleged assault on a police officer who was trying to get him sectioned in September 2021. Calocane had been due to appear in court in August 2022 and a warrant, which was still outstanding in June 2023, had been issued for his arrest.

Yesterday, Nottinghamshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said: “I have personally reviewed this matter and we should have done more to arrest him.”

He added: “In my opinion it is highly unlikely that he would have received a custodial sentence ... of course, an arrest might have triggered a route back into mental health services but, as we have seen from his previous encounters with those services, it seems unlikely that he would have engaged.”

In court, Calocane’s barrister, Peter Joyce KC, suggested his mental health worsened during his time “unlawfully at large”. Mr Joyce said Calocane was “suffering from the torture of schizophrenia” and believed healthcare professionals and police were part of the conspiracy against him. He told the court: “He had been wanted on warrant in this very city for nine months for an assault on a police officer.

“And what was the police officer doing when he was assaulted? He was trying to detain him under the mental health act ... he should not have been on the streets of Nottingham but the fact he was is not his fault.”

The court heard Calocane believed his thoughts and actions were being influenced by radio and sonic control.

Prof Nigel Blackwood, a forensic psychiatrist, said in a report on Calocane that he was “an intelligent man who strove to conceal his madness from clinicians”.

Calocane has never offered an explanation for the killings but psychiatrist Dr Liam Mcsweeney, who assessed him, said he “had for years experienced a ‘pressure’ involving voices and persecutory beliefs”.

“He said this pressure had reached a certain point and if he did not act in a certain way, something atrocious would happen to his family.”

He added: “He appreciated his actions would mean he would likely end up in prison ... he certainly implied he felt impelled to cause vast amounts of harm.” The court heard that after the killings, Calocane claimed the voices told him to hurt more people or he would be punished. He went on to drive a van at three pedestrians.

It also emerged during yesterday’s hearing that in May 2021, Calocane visited MI5’S London headquarters, asking them to stop “controlling him”.

Mr Joyce said: “He [Calocane] tried to surrender to MI5 at their headquarters to try to stop them controlling him.”

Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace’s father, has accused Calocane of “concocting” a story of mental illness after his arrest.

The hearing heard possible sentencing options for Calocane include a “hybrid” life sentence with a hospital direction or a hospital order under the Mental Health Act.

Mr Joyce urged Mr Justice Turner not to impose a whole life order, meaning Calocane could never be released from hospital, or prison.

Family members of the victims were seen shaking their heads as the barrister laid out his argument.

The hearing is expected to conclude today.

‘I have personally reviewed this matter and we should have done more to arrest him’

‘Calocane had tried to surrender to MI5 at their HQ to try to stop them controlling him’

For the families of the two university students and a school caretaker killed in Nottingham by a paranoid schizophrenic, their grief must be even harder to bear knowing that it was avoidable. The killer Valdo Calocane had not only been in and out of a mental hospital four times in three years, but a warrant had been issued for his arrest nine months’ earlier. The police had apparently failed to locate him, even though he was wanted for assaulting an officer who was trying to detain him under the Mental Health Act.

Calocane admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Nottingham Crown Court and was described by the mother of one of his victims Barnaby Webber as a “monstrous individual”. Nottingham’s deputy chief constable has conceded more should have been done to arrest Calocane. As the killer’s barrister said, he should not have been on the streets.

The case has again raised questions over the way dangerous people are handled. The gradual decline of the old asylum system since the late 1960s was predicated upon its replacement with robust and effective care in the community. The aim was to “normalise” the mentally ill, while the introduction of a new wave of psychotropic drugs in the 1960s also meant patients could be more easily treated outside of an institution. The 1983 Mental Health Act required that those who are sectioned are treated in a way “likely to alleviate or prevent a deterioration of their condition”.

But the Nottingham atrocity is by no means the first time that this reform has been found tragically wanting. Unless action is taken to reinforce community care or ensure people like Calocane are held in institutions, it won’t be the last either.