Three families of stab victims call for inquiry
THE families of the victims of triple killer Valdo Calocane have reiterated their calls for a public inquiry into the deaths after the Court of Appeal heard a bid to change his sentence.
The relatives of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates said “failure upon failure upon failure” contributed to the killings in Nottingham on June 13 last year.
They spoke after three judges heard a bid from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to change Calocane’s sentence, arguing that the indefinite hospital order he was given in January was “unduly lenient”.
Lawyers told the hearing that the 32-year-old, who has paranoid schizophrenia, should be given a life sentence as part of a “hybrid” order, meaning he would be treated in hospital before serving the rest of his sentence in prison.
The Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said a decision would be given “within seven days or so”.
Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice following the hearing, Dr Sanjoy Kumar, father of Ms O’Malley-Kumar, said: “Valdo Calocane murdered our children and Ian Coates, and it’s very, very hard for all of us in this process when what we should be doing is grieving for our children, but we are here instead fighting for them.
“But we will fight. We will fight all of the organisations that failed us, and what is becoming abundantly clear is the long list of people and organisations that failed us. We have two police forces, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, that have failed us, we have got a mental health trust that failed us, we have got an NHS trust that failed us, we have got a county council that failed us. How many more people do we need to add to the list of failures?
“And that is why what we are saying is that to join all of these investigations together, we would robustly ask for a public inquiry for the benefit of every family in England who send their children away to university.
“They should be safe and sound. They should not have the fate that we have had to encounter and that is why we still call for a public inquiry to join up everything when we have found failure upon failure upon failure.”
Calocane fatally stabbed 19-year-old university students Mr Webber and Ms O’Malley-Kumar as they walked home from a night out in the early hours of June 13. He then went on to stab Mr Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, and stole his van which he used to knock down three pedestrians.
He later admitted three counts of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and three counts of attempted murder, with prosecutors accepting his not-guilty pleas to murder charges based on medical evidence.