The parents of two students who were stabbed to death by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane have branded Nottinghamshire Police’s decision not to disclose information about the killer “shameful”.
Calocane killed first-year students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, before fatally stabbing caretaker Ian Coates, 65, and trying to murder three pedestrians with a van in Nottingham on June 13 2023.
During closing submissions in the public inquiry into the attacks, it emerged that Nottinghamshire Police had not disclosed information about Calocane to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), psychiatric experts or to the inquiry team.
The inquiry heard on Tuesday for the first time that police had not disclosed that Calocane had written a list of explosives and researched large venues in Nottingham.
Speaking after the hearing, Mr Webber’s mother Emma Webber told reporters: “I’m heartbroken and just feel just like a shell of myself, because just when you think all of the revelations and all of the horrors have been revealed, more and more comes.
“To see the stuff of that monster’s penmanship, of his bomb recipes, and thoughts and processes, and how none of that has been properly investigated, it’s so shameful and it’s so heartbreaking.”
Calocane was sentenced in January 2024 to an indefinite hospital order after his guilty plea to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility was accepted by the prosecution.
Mrs Webber said the judge who sentenced Calocane “did not hear all that he should have heard”.
She added: “The investigation, the prosecution, was flawed, they were cover-ups.
“This is an individual who knew what he was doing.
“He was mentally unwell, but he knew enough to look at large venues in Nottingham. He knew enough to assess his arsenal of weapons.”
The inquiry heard evidence from more than 160 witnesses from February to early June this year.
Mrs Webber said she thinks more evidence needs to be heard, adding: “What we’ve seen in some of the written responses to questions is nowhere near the detail that’s needed and the gravity of what’s been uncovered since the 5th of June.
“I don’t think it would be fair to us, be fair to Grace, Barney, Ian, all the survivors, to cut corners now.”
Miss O’Malley-Kumar’s father Dr Sanjoy Kumar said putting the people of Nottingham and the rest of the country at risk is “unforgivable”.
Dr Kumar said: “This man (Calocane) was plotting a Nottingham bombing.
“He had maps of Nottingham venues, where your children could have been, where people in Nottingham could even have been today and would be today.
“He had a recipe for bombs and making pipe bombs. This man could have killed three or 400 people in one day.
“But this was not considered during the hearing.
“To think that none of this evidence was used and just shimmied away.”
Dr Kumar said the police investigation is still incomplete and families want answers about where Calocane got his weapons.
He continued: “If you’re going to be transparent about this investigation, you need to get this investigation right. This investigation has not uncovered everything.”
He added: “This is no ending for us.
“Again, I stress that this cannot happen in our country again and that is our fight.”
Speaking about the remainder of closing submissions to be heard on Wednesday, Mrs Webber said: “We’ve read them, we’re horrified with them, we’re disgusted by them.
“Let’s see if they still bring to the stand tomorrow their excuses, their evasions and their defensiveness.”
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