The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
‘Nottingham attacker wasn’t schizophrenic as he stabbed my sister to death’
The brother of a university student killed in the Nottingham attacks has said his family do not believe her killer was suffering from “acute schizophrenia” at the time amid a growing number of unanswered questions about the knifeman.
James O’Malley-Kumar said CCTV footage, which emerged on Thursday, showed Valdo Calocane acting in a “completely stable manner” shortly before he took the lives of university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65, on June 13 last year.
At Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday he was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. He was originally charged with murder but this was downgraded to manslaughter in November after prosecutors accepted his change of plea.
Mr O’Malley Kumar, speaking to LBC, said: “During the lead up to the hearing in Nottingham this week, we had seen the CCTV timeline and he was completely OK on the day.
“He wasn’t walking around Notts with his trousers around his ankles. He was acting in a completely stable manner.”
Mr O’Malley Kumar said that while his family accepted Calocane was unwell, the hospital order had been “very difficult to accept”. “We still don’t think that, to this day, he was suffering from acute schizophrenia during the time of the attacks.”
During the sentencing, the families of the victims raised a number of questions in relation to the extent of Calocane’s illness at the time of the killings, and what the possible genesis of his psychosis was.
Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace’s father, questioned why no toxicology tests had been carried out in the immediate aftermath of the killing.
In court, psychiatrists said that there was no suggestion that substance misuse had played a role in Calocane’s declining mental health.
Calocane had refused to allow officers to take a sample after he was arrested, and police cannot compel someone to do so.
Shortly after the killings however, local residents claimed there was always a strong smell of cannabis coming from a house he had been living in a number of months before the attacks.
Details of Calocane’s life before he began studying for a degree in mechanical engineering in 2019 at the University of Nottingham have also proved elusive.
Adrian Vaughan, the pastor at the Calvary Church attended by the Calocane family in Haverfordwest, previously told The Telegraph that he had “moved away from home sooner than his parents wanted him to and they lost touch with him.”
He said he was aware Calocane was on antipsychotic medication and speculated that the combination of using those alongside recreational drugs could have played a part in his dramatic deterioration.
Mr Vaughan described Calocane as a “bit of a mystery man” and said “something happened to him when he left home.”
Calocane lost touch with his family for around a decade after leaving home when he was about 17 and what he did for the decade between leaving Pembrokeshire and re-surfacing in Nottingham, is unclear. In his victim impact statement, Dr Kumar also accused his daughter’s killer of “concocting” a story months after the event. “It is my regret that psychiatrists did not interview you face to face and get accounts from people who saw you on the day ... if they had seen you they would have seen you were of sound mind.
“You are a deceptive individual, you have deceived psychiatrists who have based their opinion on partial diagnosis and reports.”
Calocane is being held in a segregated unit of high security Ashworth Hospital due to the risk he poses to other patients.
Following the sentencing hearing, Emma Webber, Barnaby’s mother, raised a number of questions about the treatment of Calocane’s mental health after his arrest.
She asked why Calocane did not have a mental health assessment when he was first taken into custody. She also questioned why he allegedly did not receive any treatment for his illness until mid September, and why he remained in prison until November, when he was moved to a secure unit.
She also asked why forensic psychiatrist Dr Nigel Blackwood, who was instructed by the CPS in August to assess Calocane, did not do so until Nov 14.
Peter Joyce KC, the barrister who defended Calocane, said in mitigation there was “no fabrication [of mental illness] no exaggeration, no concoction” on his behalf.
Mr Joyce said schizophrenia had “stalked down” a man of previously impeccable character and behaviour.
He added: “Any pretence that he is not ill is wrong.”
‘He wasn’t walking around with his trousers around his ankles. He was acting in a stable manner’ ‘If you were interviewed face to face on the day, they would have seen you were of sound mind’