Where is compassion for Barnaby’s grieving mum?

For those whose loved ones have been murdered, justice becomes incredibly important. Because justice and memories are all they have left.

Emma Webber has had to bear the unbearable, but her agony and her quest for justice — and dignity in death — for her son, Barnaby, continues.

Along with his friend and fellow student Grace o’Malley- Kumar, Barnaby was randomly killed by a knife-wielding maniac in Nottingham last summer.

The two 19-year- olds were stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic who’d stopped taking his prescription drugs. Unmonitored and unmedicated, Calocane also murdered janitor Ian Coates, 65, and attempted to murder three others.

It was bad enough for Emma — and all the victims’ families — when Calocane was convicted of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and attempted murder, then sent to a high- security hospital instead of prison.

There was no murder trial. No opportunity to ask questions about why this man had been roaming the streets of Nottingham in a murderous frenzy, free to kill and maim as he pleased.

After Mrs Webber and others protested, the Attorney General agreed that the sentence was unduly lenient and the case was referred to the Court of Appeal. A sentence review hearing has been set for May.

In the meantime, Mrs Webber has had to deal with the insensitivity and intransigence of Nottinghamshire Police. She had been made aware of a WhatsApp group, where police officers had discussed her son’s murder in brutal terms.

‘A couple of students have been proper butchered,’ was one message.

one understands that police officers sometimes use gallows humour to get them through some of the bleaker challenges of their jobs, but you have to wonder — have they learned nothing?

The Sarah Everard case; the Nicola Bulley case; the cops sharing pictures on WhatsApp of two half-sisters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole

Smallman, stabbed to death in a London park? Where is the dignity, where is the humanity, where is the respect for others? And if you cannot conduct yourself with decorum at a murder scene, should you even be in the police force?

Emma Webber said the contents of the WhatsApp group were ‘abhorrent’ and wanted to write a private letter to those involved, but Nottinghamshire Police refused to accept it — and now say it is ‘inappropriate’ to comment on the matter.

I’ll tell you what is inappropriate — treating a bereaved mother in such a highhanded, callous way. The police are there to protect the public, not themselves, and the vast majority carry out this task with care and skill. But when they get it wrong, they should own up to it promptly.

To deny Emma Webber even this small comfort, after everything she has been through, is a disgrace.