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Nottingham attacks
University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were walking home when they were fatally stabbed
The parents of the two students who were killed by Valdo Calocane have given moving accounts of their heartbreak at the inquiry into the Nottingham attacks.
University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, were walking home from a night out on June 13, 2023, when they were fatally stabbed on Ilkeston Road by paranoid schizophrenic Calocane.
They were Calocane’s first victims on that day – but as the Nottingham Inquiry has found they were far from the first people he had subjected to horrific violence.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 25, Emma and David Webber will gave evidence to the inquiry.
Their son Barnaby, who they usually refer to as Barney, had been studying history at the University of Nottingham when he was killed.
They were followed by Dr Sanjoy Kumar and Dr Sinéad O’Malley, whose daughter Grace – who had been a medical student at the same university – had tried to defend her friend Barnaby.
On Tuesday, March 24, the judge-led inquiry into Calocane’s killings heard from the family of 65-year-old grandad Ian Coates, who the killer fatally stabbed after taking the lives of his younger victims and used his van to attempt to kill three others.
The Webber, Kumar and Coates families have been highly critical of the failures of Nottinghamshire Police and the county’s mental healthcare services, amongst other city institutions, since Calocane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order for manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and attempted murder in January 2024.
Our live coverage of the hearing has now concluded. You can still catch up on what happened down below.
Key Events
Holding back tears, bereaved father Sanjoy told the inquiry: “We have been deprived of a beautiful and brave daughter who would have one day got married, given us grandchildren.
“She was the love of my life. She was following my footsteps, my wife’s footsteps. She made us immensely proud. We miss her dearly
“We can stop mental health homicide in this country. We can stop it. The way we can stop it is by holding people accountable to do their jobs.”
The inquiry has now finished for today and will resume tomorrow morning at 10am.
Sinead said the University of Nottingham, as well as failing to support Grace and Barnaby’s friends, had thrown out her daughter’s belongings.
“The university threw away all of Grace’s belongings and keepsakes that we had earmarked for her friends that she was due to live with in year two,” the grieving mother told the inquiry.
She told the chair that while the journey to the inquiry had been long, she was determined to do her justice.
Sinead criticised Claire Thompson, former associate director of student wellbeing at the university, for thisand her “duplicity” – as the university worker had interacted with Calocane when he was a student but the families did not know this.
Sinead, Grace’s mother, has criticised the poor treatment and reckless discharge of Valdo Calocane before the killings.
“Psychiatry is the only medical specialty where poor treatment, lack of treatment, or refusal of the patient to take treatment can result in the death of a third party,” she said.
“They risk assessed for their own staff could only visit [Calocane] in pairs with a male, yet they were happy to discharge him back to the GP without any treatment.
“They were lazy and quite frankly it’s unacceptable.”
The parents proposed that there should be publicly accessible grading system for NHS mental heath trusts that track complaints from families, poor outcomes, suicides, homicides, and instances of violence.
They added that victim support roles needed to be redefined and that services should communicate clearly in writing to victims.
Ms Langdale KC has asked the Kumars what they think of the level of work and communication from the IOPC, which is currently investigating both Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire’s police forces.
“The IOPC have been unprofessional and nothing but a joke,” Sanjoy said.
The bereaved father said one example of the policing watchdog’s lack of seriousness was displayed when a decision maker had held a prayer before providing answers in a meeting.
“He held a prayer in the room, when we walked in.
“It was the most absurd thing that I have ever seen in my life.
“You know, here we were asking serious questions.”
Sinead explained to the inquiry’s counsel that she could not even answer the question of where the different IOPC investigations were at “because they just go on and on and on”.
The parents have been telling the inquiry that they felt Nottinghamshire Healthcare trust had failed in its duty to treat Calocane and protect the public.
“Every physician in the land knows this, you are allowed to breach confidentiality if you think one of your patients is going to go out there and cause harm,” Sanjoy said.
“We wanted to know how he’d been treated. We wanted to know whether the treatment had been good, effective, and efficient and it turns out that it hadn’t been. In fact it was useless.”
Sanjoy said he was shocked at how Calocane scaring an Italian student into jumping from a window and breaking her back in the past had been “underplayed” by healthcare professionals and police.
“This is a young girl from a different country who doesn’t know the system, who jumped out of a fear of her life.
“This man constantly did not take his medication. This is a person who needed an injection to rapidly sedate him and that was given by force.”
When asked about the sentencing of Calocane in January 2024, Sinead said she was concerned by the lack of questioning of the psychiatric evidence at the hearing.
“It was like going to watch a play,” Sanjoy said, referring to its surreal nature, adding that the defence had portrayed the killed as an “upstanding citizen of Nottingham”.
Sanjoy added: “We didn’t even think that the investigation was complete.
“I’m just delighted that they are submitted to the chair to look at. The concerns I had, I don’t have answers to them.”
The parents and doctors added that they were doubtful over Calocane’s diagnosis treatment resistment schizophrenia.
Sanjoy added: “We had said time and time again, in our view this was not treatment resistant schizophrenia. This man resisted his treatment. They are two very different things.”
Ms Langdale, inquiry counsel, asked the medically-trained parents if they believed hair samples – which can be taken without a suspect’s consent – should have been taken by police.
Sanjoy, who explained that in his career as a doctor he had developed a very good understanding of forensic samples, said they should have been.
“A basic part of forensics is head hair,” he told the inquiry, adding that it was a “cachet” of normal sampling.
He added: “It may have proved nothing, but it may have proved everything. The point is that it wasn’t done.”
Medic Sanjoy questioned how the report on Calocane’s mental health could be put together without asking others how he was acting.
“How can a doctor come up with a report without speaking to collateral witnesses on the day?
“It is practically impossible. It defies common sense, let alone qualified sense.”
Sanjoy said that the security guard who spoke to Calocane between the killings of Barnaby and Grace and Ian should have been spoken to, as well as his family.
“He had a history of being obfuscatory, deceitful, not taking his medication and being able to pull the wool over the eyes of his psychiatrists in the past,” Sinead added.
“It was crystal ball psychiatry. And why do I say that? Because you;ve got a psychiatrist who sees someone five months down the line in different circumstances, different medication.
“To me, the first report was useless, because it didn’t look at the time of when this person had been evicted, when this person had called his brother, when this person had had a long talk with the security guard after killing our children and then going on to murder someone else.”
Sanjoy said he had been assured by investigator detective superintendent Leigh Sanders that all of this information had been given to the psychiatrist.
“It was a lie. All of this material was not given to the psychiatrist.”
Sinead added: “We couldn’t understand how someone so acutely psychotically unwell and violent could remain in custody and not require hospitalisation.”
Sanjoy said he had a “real sense of panic” as the court case progressed in November while the families had still not established many of the important facts about Calocane’s history.
The inquiry has been shown emails where the doctor questions why Calocane had been examined by a psychiatrist five months after he carried out his killings.
“I was totally dissatisfied,” he explained to the inquiry.
“I vociferously complained about the fact that this person’s mental health had not been looked at on the day.”
Sanjoy – who had previously in his career worked to examine the health of suspects being held in custody – explained that officers had not mentioned Calocane showing any signs of being acutely mentally unwell in custody, which he said was in his opinion “enormously, enormously unusual”.
Sanjoy has explained to the inquiry that he had signed a medical examination form when asked by the police, but it had not been explained to him that this would mean tissue samples would be taken from Grace.
“They took samples from our children to test for drugs and alcohol.
“I was really struck by that, as being quite disgusting. Our children were tested but the culprit wasn’t.”
Sanjoy said he was “completely unprepared” for the Old Market Square vigil held by the city council on June 15, which he thought would be a meeting with councillors about their concerns.
Sinead told the inquiry it was mostly seemingly a meet and greet with politicians.
They had to try find and meet the Coates family by themselves during the “chaotic” event, she explained
“We weren’t expecting the size of it,” she added.
“It just seemed to me that this was an opportunity for the councillors and faith leaders to just say their 15 minutes or whatever they had to say, rather than actually talk about the event itself,” Sanjoy said.
Sinead has told the inquiry that she had met with the former Vice Chancellor of the university to express concerns that it had failed to help the friends of the killed students after their deaths.
The doctor said the university “fell well short” in providing the wellbeing support needed.
“The university were not proactive in reaching out. This was exceptional.
“The university should have had professional trauma healthcare professionals reaching out actively to Grace and Barney’s friends.”
The parents of Grace, who have placed a picture of their 19-year-old daughter in the front of them on the witness stand, said they were shocked by the strength of feeling at the University of Nottingham vigil on June 14.
“We were flabbergasted to see the number of students that were there, the amount of media, my family had all flown in from Ireland.” Sinead told the inquiry.
The bereaved mother trembled as she described seeing all of Grace’s hockey friends and Barnaby’s cricket friends in their outfits at the emotional gathering.
“It was a sign of absolute chaos, seeing there the whole squad in absolute disbelief and tears,” Sanjoy said.
“It was a sight to behold. It was a hillside, literally a hillside full of students.”
The parents of Grace O’Malley-Kumar are now being asked by Rachel Langdale KC how they learned of her death.
Sinead explained to the inquiry that she always reads the news in the morning and had seen the Nottingham incident on June 13, 2023.
“The headline was that there had been an attack in Nottingham and a man and a woman had been found dead,” she said.
“We tried to call Grace but we thought she’d probably just slept it out.
“As the morning progressed I got increasingly worried, we hadn’t heard from Grace.”
The family later decided to ring the helpline and call QMC at around 11am, but she did not get an answer.
Friends had been to Grace’s accommodation and she was not there, Sinead explained.
Sanjoy meanwhile, had gone to his GP practice to start a morning clinic, but tried ringing her after concerns were raised.
“Gracey and I had a very special relationship. She knew that if Daddy called it was only for something really quite important.
“I rang her phone at least eight times.”
Sinead then later received a call from one of Grace’s friends saying that Barnaby had been found dead and that Grace was walking home with him.
“That’s when the penny dropped that this must be Grace.” Sinead said.
The inquiry has been paused for lunch, with today’s hearing due to resume after 2pm.
We are expecting hear from Dr Sanjoy Kumar and Dr Sinead O’Malley, the parents of Grace O’Malley-Kumar when the inquiry restarts.
Asked by Ms Langdale KC if she wanted to share anything more with the hearing, Barnaby’s mum Emma continued: “I dropped my son to a city that wasn’t safe to have him.
“That’s a burden I must bear.
“I don’t want Barney to be forgotten, I don’t want his name to be defined alongside that of a monster.
“I want those who knew him and loved him to always remember the impact he had, the love of life that he brought and the difference he made in his all too short time with us.
“Barney, I love you and I miss you always.”
In a very powerful statement, Emma Webber has told the inquiry: “We sit here today not because we want to but because we have to. But what you don’t see is the shell of a devastated mother in private behind closed doors who can barely breathe through her grief.
“I once said to Dave ‘I need to leave this world. I need to be with Barney. And that you, Dave, can then look after Charlie [Barnaby’s brother]’
“But there is still strength in me and there is still determination and I will never stop. I will never stop this fight until this gross wrong has been righted”
The bereaved mother then told the hearing that they were the latest victims of the systems that had failed them.
“Let me be clear, this isn’t just our story. We are the victims of systems, institutions, and services that have failed and are failing and have been so far far too long.”
Emma said the families had been faced with “evasion, deflection, arrogance, avoidance, damage limitation, self protectionism and downright lies”.
“We are also proof that this could happen to any family, anywhere, at any time. How many more Calocanes are still out there roaming the streets?”
David explained to the inquiry that he had respect for the police and said they had a hard job to do.
“But in this case they let us down, they have acted in a way that I think is abhorrent,” he said.
“I can’t forgive them for that, because this is my son. I think the least they could do now is to actually just tell the truth.”
Emma said the NHS could have prevented death if they had taken a robust approach to managing the risk posed by Calocane.
“We’re spending far too much time, worrying about discrimination, and segregation and doing the wrong thing because somebody is of a certain colour or certain age or certain religion.
“If you’re sick, you’re sick and you have the right to be treated respectfully. If you’re dangerous, you’re dangerous.”
She added she thought the changes being made currently to the Mental Health Act “fell short” of what was needed.
David called mental health a “hot potato”, as police were having to deal with more mental health related crimes they did not want to deal with.
Both parents said the NHS or police should not shirk protecting the public because dangerous people have mental health conditions.
The parents have been asked about police officers who viewed footage and information relating to the Nottingham attacks, which included a special constable who was dismissed for viewing horrific bodycam footage of Barnaby being treated.
“We were told all the way through this that, for [Calocane] for instance, his privacy was massively important,” David told the inquiry.
“My son, who was the victim, his privacy was not taken into consideration.”
Emma added: “This is my son lying in the road having been brutally stabbed multiple times, fighting for his life, and ultimately losing it.
“That’s so wrong. And I will never forgive them.”
Barnaby’s parents said they had been told by the officer investigating the case that body worn footage would be under “lock and key”.
Emma Webber has told the inquiry she found out about the non-reportable briefing from journalists who were asking about the purpose of the meeting.
Barnaby’s mum then asked then Chief Constable Kate Meynell to ask if there was going to be any info in the briefing that they did not know about.
She was assured the family knew all the information that the media would be told in the briefing, but Emma said this was not true.
“There was loads of that [information they did not know].
“We had not been given much information about the body worn footage particularly. We were definitely unclear.”
Emma said she did not think the Webbers had been told about a member of counter staff at Nottinghamshire Police had inappropriately accessed information.
“We did not know anything whatsoever about stalking, or about the details of assaults previously on other flatmates,” she added.
On January 29, 2024, the Webbers received a letter from then Chief Constable Kate Meynell.
The letter offered a meeting, but Emma said the “horse had bolted”.
On Jan 30 the families were informed the force had referred itself to IOPC, which is the policing watchdog.
Asked by Ms Langdale KC if he had faith in the IOPC, David said: “I thought they will look at this in an independent matter.
“They will bring them up and deal with them in an independent manner.”
Asked if he thought the IOPC had the capacity to make investigations independently of the police, David said he did at the time.
Emma told the inquiry she did not believe the IOPC was up to the job.
“I do not believe they are fit for purpose,” she said.
“The way we have been treated and communicated with as families falls far short of an independent office who are responsible and the body to manage the police.
“We had put our trust and faith in investigations and we shouldn’t have done.”
Emma said she did not understand the “overwhelming diatribe of information” given to them by the CPS, leading to confusion about what would be said or shown in the court hearing.
The inquiry was told the Calocane case was originally supposed to be heard in a smaller courtroom.
David said he thought the potential change to a smaller courtroom was to “get rid of this as quick as possible, make it small” by limiting press and family friend inclusion.
“It was damage limitation I believe” Emma added.
On the statements given by families on the steps of Nottingham Crown Court after Calocane’s sentencing in January 2024, Emma said: “We hadn’t been given any opportunity to be heard properly.
“We were even managed in our victim impact statements”
The parents said the Webber family were told that they had to keep their victim impact statements as short as possible and that only certain people could give them.
The Webbers received a letter CPS received on December 18, 2023, explaining the reasoning being the decision to accept Calocane’s manslaughter plea.
Emma wrote to police on December 20 to express concern over the rush and feeling like the case was being “railroaded”.
“I think the timeline speaks for itself,” Emma told the inquiry. “The initial request from the CPS for their first ever meeting was going to be an hour before accepting the plea.”
Emma said the families had asked for a fresh set of eyes on the psychiatric evidence from the day of the attacks.
“What was further insult to our injury was to hear in the opening of the case from the CPS and the sentencing hearing that such was their determination to ensure that they had reached the right conclusions they instructed four [psychiatric] reports, and inferred it was their behest.
“It wasn’t. It was done because we were begging and pleading for them.”
Emma told the inquiry she found this “insulting”.
David Webber told the inquiry he had been disgusted by a email from now-retired investigator Leigh Sanders, who had been sent information to consider by fellow grieving parent Dr Kumar following the CPS meeting.
The detective superintendent told the families that he was dealing with another inquiry in his reply.
“I’m not stupid. I know he would be working on another inquiry,” David said.
“However, that’s disgusting.”
The dad explained that to him the most important thing in the world was the investigation into his son’s death, and that the reply came off as insensitive.
Emma said that everything about the manslaughter plea, which they had not been prepared for, felt wrong.
“I knew something was wrong and I knew that I had to do anything and everything possible to understand,” she told the inquiry.
David, acknowledged he was not an expert, but he said the process felt like “trial by doctor”.
He said that he saw Calocane’s actions before the killings portrayed a more deliberate mindset than what was being presented by psychiatrists.
The father said that he and his wife were frustrated that no one could answer questions which they thought were simple.
“None of this makes sense,” David said, recalling amongst other aspects the police’s explanation of where Calocane missing bag had gone.
On November 28, 2023, Valdo Calocane appeared at Nottingham Crown Court and pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, and three counts of attempted murder.
David said he had watched this hearing and told the inquiry that the process felt rushed.
“It was all very rushed,” he said.
I couldn’t bring Barney back so time didn’t matter at this point.
“I wanted it to be done properly and if it took longer, it took longer.”
While the Webbers had thought, and had it suggested to them by officers, that Calocane was sure to be sentenced for murder, they had a meeting in November 2023 where they learned the CPS would not be pursuing this.
The Webbers and Kumars had attended a Teams meeting where prosecutors told them that they had acceptedthe diminished responsibility plea of manslaughter by Calocane.
Emma said: “In my head it was like a ringing. I could just hear the words ‘manslaughter’ and that’s the first time that had even entered my head.”
Emma told the inquiry that she had asked the CPS why the Coates were not in the meeting and she recalled a “pregnant pause”, before she was told they preferred to be told via a family liason officer.
David explained that he had been hearing rumours that a warrant had been out for Calocane’s arrest when he carried out his killings.
“There were rumours that were flying around that there was a warrant for his arrest that was outstanding,” he told the inquiry.
David explained that he had asked the senior investigating officer on the case, detective superintendent Leigh Sanders, about this during a meeting in September 2023.
But although he asked the question outright, he told the inquiry he received a “very wishy washy” answer from the officer.
The parents said they were unhappy about statements made by police officer Rob Griffin about the warrant in 2024, when he suggested arresting Calocane over his failure to attend a court hearing for assaulting another officer would not have prevented Calocane’s attacks.
David said: “I find it very offensive when people say things like that, because that’s not really the point.
“The point is you didn’t do your job. Had you done your job, you don’t know what would have happened.”
“How dare he,” Emma added.
“I believe that the Nottinghamshire Police force actively chose to not to tell us that information,” she added, labelling it “insulting”.
The Webbers said they first learned Calocane was a former University of Nottingham student after the former boss of the university, Professor Shearer West made a comment alluding to this at the Old Market Square vigil on June 15.
Emma said this remark “floored her” and explained that her and her husband had not been told about this.
“We had never been told. The police hadn’t told us, the university hadn’t told us and they should have.
“The one thing that really hurts the most is that they didn’t, they must have chosen to not tell us.”
The parents said the first person they saw at Orchard Hotel on the University of Nottingham campus was former Chief Constable Kate Meynell.
Emma said the police boss had hugged them, had tears in her eyes, and said she was “so, so sorry” for what had happened.
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