News
Nottingham News
Nottingham attacks
The inquiry heard yesterday that their dad’s body was left in the street for 15 hours
The sons and partner of Nottingham grandad Ian Coates – who was brutally killed by Valdo Calocane in 2023 – have given evidence at the public inquiry examining the circumstances of his death.
The Nottingham Inquiry is looking at the series of failures by police, the NHS, and other bodies that led to paranoid schizophrenic Calocane killing three people on June 13, 2023, and attempting to kill three more. On Tuesday, March 24, it heard from the loved ones of Mr Coates.
The inquiry also heard from Elaine Newton, Ian Coates’ partner, and two of his three sons – James and Lee.
Ms Newton revealed that intially she had been told by police her partner had died in a car crash, telling the inquiry she subsequently felt like he had “died twice”.
His sons James and Lee also spoke of how they felt like an “afterthought” due to delays in them receiving vital information about his death and Calocane’s previous contact with police officers and NHS medics.
On Monday, the judge-led inquiry heard that Nottinghamshire Police had left the 65-year-old’s body on Magdala Road for 15 hours after he was killed on the morning of June 13, 2023.
The force, which has been slated during the first four weeks of the Nottingham Inquiry, had also left Mr Coates covered only by blankets for two hours until a tent was put up over him.
Mr Coates, a beloved family man and committed Nottingham Forest fan, was the third person fatally stabbed by Calocane nearly three years ago.
The knifeman had killed University of Nottingham students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, before finding Mr Coates – who was about to retire.
He stole Mr Coates’ van and used it to try and kill Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller in Nottingham city centre.
The family members of Calocane’s other victims and those he injured are expected to give evidence later this week.
The hearing has now concluded. You can catch up on what happened below.
Key Events
Thank you for following our coverage of the Nottingham Inquiry today.
Today’s hearing has now been concluded by the chair following the end of Ian’s sons’ evidence.
Our coverage of the inquiry will resume again at 10am tomorrow.
Reflecting on what the sons had learned so far at the inquiry, James said: “The amount of new information that has surfaced astounds me.
“Over the last two and half years I thought I’d heard it all, from missed opportunities, misconduct, clerical mistakes and institutional laziness but unfortunately more revelations are coming out each week.
“I feel sorry for the people of Nottingham who put their trust into police, the NHS, and the mental health [services], who had continued to fail them.”
Lee, who was also asked his thoughts on what the first four weeks of the inquiry had shown him, said: “I’ve been shocked and dissatisfied with the responses the witnesses have provided and the stances they have fiercely maintained.
“I have come to terms with the fact that all the deaths were preventable. The inadaquate efforts made by the police to search for VC have shocked and traumatized me further.
“I stand here today to fight for my dad. His life mattered. He deserved better than what happened to him and I will not stop saying that until it is acknowledged not just in words, but in meaningful change.”
Under questioning by Ms Langdale KC, James said he did not understand why details of the Whatsapp group in which information was inappropriately shared was not shared with the Coates family earlier.
“From the police were given very, very little information about the Whatsapp.”
Lee acknowledged that communication and information sharing was important, but said he thought measures would be in place to limit inappropriate access to information more effectively.
He added that the data breaches within Nottingham’s institutions on top on the missed opportunities was a “endless kick in the teeth”.
The Coates sons told the inquiry they had hoped Calocane would be sentenced to a hybrid order, where he would be treated and then put in prison.
He received a hospital order.
Lee said: “They’re telling you that he’s unsafe to go into a normal prison. Of course his is, he’s a monster you know, look at what he’s done.”
James said that the judge had not explained Calocane’s sentence in way he could understand and when he asked to speak to the CPS he was told they had already left.
James added: “We were told that he was under a massive psychosis, that he didn’t know what he was doing. He knew what he was doing,” listing that he was on his phone, listening to music, eating a sandwich and then having a chat with a cleaner.”
Lee later said he felt second class in comparison to others as the Coates had to “forage and find out information ourselves,” contacting the police rather than them contacting Ian’s loved ones, and not initially being invited to the city council vigil.
James told the inquiry he had been looking for facts on social media in the absence of official answers from the police, resulting in him being misinformed about Calocane.
“I was going on Twitter, probably the worst place to go for any credible information, [and] putting his name in.
“If we got the answers, that I now know that the police had, they could have just told us and it would have put my mind at ease a lot.”
He later added: “We were drip fed very little information from official sources, through the whole process.”
The two Coates brothers said they had wanted to contact the other families of Calocane’s victims, but were told the other families did not want to be contacted – which was not true.
Asked by Ms Langdale about the Coates’ relationship with the Webber and Kumar families, James said: “The relationship we have had has been a massive help with us.
“We knew that something wasn’t right.”
Lee said the others impacted by Calocane’s awful crimes were “the families we never asked for”.
“I’ll always say I wish I’d never met them and my dad was still alive. But to go through this with the others families, I don’t know if I would personally manage without them.”
James said Ian’s family had been given some “very upsetting” information about his injuries after the vigil, but still did not have the full picture of what had happened.
He then told the inquiry how he was taken back by Calocane’s size when he first saw him at Nottingham Crown Court.
“Knowing that my dad, who was six months from retirement, he’s always been quite skinny, he lived off coffee and cigarettes as his main diet, and then obviously knowing that Barney and Grace were just young, innocent students coming home from a night out, to see him and his build I just knew that there was never going to be any chance of them protecting themselves.”
James and Lee said they had gone to the vigil held by the University of Nottingham, but had learnt about the huge gathering outside of Nottingham’s Council House on June 15 through a journalist.
Family members asked the council why they had not been invited to a vigil where they were going to speak about Ian, the brothers told the inquiry.
“At this point it already felt that we were a bit of an afterthought,” Lee said.
The bereaved son explained he felt “it was was right to thank the people of Nottingham that had come out to support us,” adding that he was told around 7,000 people had gathered in Old Market Square.
As well as being frustrated with the city council, Lee said the Chief Constable had been “disingenuous” when she suggested that the force was doing everything it could for families in the days after the attacks.
The Coates went to James’ house as their suspicions over what had happened intensified, the brothers told the inquiry.
James said that his wife and mum had called it to try and get more information, with the family receiving a call back from the police 10 minutes before Kate Meynell went on TV to a press conference about the Nottingham attacks.
“We knew that he was still there when we got the phone call from the police around five o’clock.
“I remember how hard it was to restrain ourselves [to not go to the scene].
“It’s only recently through the inquiry that I’ve learnt he was there until half past eight at night”
Lee added: “We found it very difficult to know that just a stone’s throw away was where my dad lay.”
Rachel Langdale KC is now questioning both Lee and James Coates about how they learned of their father’s death.
James said he was aware of the incident through a group chat as he was working at Victoria Centre at the time, as people could not get into work.
He into work and spoke to a few staff, discussing the Magdala Road death with colleagues but had no idea it was his dad.
It was not until 3pm that he checked Instagram and saw he had a message from a family friend saying ‘I can’t believe what’s happened to your dad, please ring me’.
James thought it was a hoax and thought his family friend had been hacked.
Lee was working on the outskirts of nottingham city centre and had also received a message in a Whatsapp group that people may be late to work because of shutdown of Nottingham city centre.
When asked about the inappropriate accessing of information by court staff, Ms Newton said she was not surprised.
Ian’s partner explained she felt the people who were supposed to be helping her treated her in a condescending and box-ticking manner.
On her victim support worker, Ms Newton said: “I was a tick box and she was just trying to put me right by telling me to move house, sell the house, buy a dog, go and live by the sea, the walks by the seafront will do you good.”
After this the chair of the Nottingham Inquiry, Her Honour Deborah Taylor, asked if would be better if there was someone who could “speak English” to victims rather than the legal jargon used by police and the courts.
The witness agreed, adding: ” You want to ask questions but you didn’t know if you was being daft about asking a question.”
Ms Newton said she had to chase Nottinghamshire Healthcare for the report discussed in this meeting, which they later said they had forgotten to send her.
Mr Majid then emailed over the Theemis report which was carried out into Calocane’s healthcare.
She replied saying the trust had showed “complete incompetence” and said she had “zero confidence” in it to improve.
She told the NHS boss she wanted the people who cared and signed off to release him to resign or be struck off.
Rachel Langdale KC asked about her views now she had even more information about NHS and police failings.
“They’re the same with the NHS. My views of the police have changed.
“I think the police have let the public and myself and all the other families down.
“They didn’t do their job properly. They didn’t communicate with the NHS, the NHS didn’t communicate with the police. They’ve caused this between them all.”
Ms Newton had been given limited information about Calocane’s mental health by the senior investigating police officer, she told the inquiry.
“I asked why they let him go, knowing that he was not taking his medication. They couldn’t really answer that question to me.”
She then received a letter from Ifti Majid, the chief executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare, who said he could not share confidential information about Calocane’s care and treatment.
This letter invited her to discuss a report on Calocane’s treatment and Ms Newton took up this offer.
“I wanted to go to that meeting because I felt they were more responsible for the care of VC, so I wanted to go to that meeting.
“It wasn’t a very nice meeting.”
Ms Newton told the inquiry she was frustrated the person who discharged Calocane was not present at the meeting.
“They must of said they were sorry about 10 times and in the meeting I told them I didn’t want to hear their sorries any more.”
Ms Newton explained she felt the manslaughter charge that Calocane received and court processes were not explained to her clearly enough.
“It’s not explained enough. They think you understand, because it’s their job. You go along with it.”
She explained to Ms Langdale KC that she had attended the crown court and sentencing hearing, but had been protected from seeing Calocane.
Speaking about how Calocane was sentenced for manslaughter, Ms Newton said: “I don’t think it was fair.”
She said she had been told Calocane could not be charged for murder due to his mental health.
“I was never told any information about his [Calocane’s] past,” Ms Newton said, explaining that she had only learned about all the incidents involving the eventual killer during the Nottingham Inquiry.
The inquiry heard she had previously written a letter previously saying she had no complaints with the police.
Ms Langdale KC, counsel for the Nottingham Inquiry, asked if this was still the case after learning of the force’s previous contact with Calocane and their failure to capture him whilst he was wanted before his killings on June 13, 2023.
“I wouldn’t have thanked Kate Meynell [the Chief Constable],” she said.
“I feel like I’m not being given the information and I’ve been lied to, really.”
“She could have gave me more information when I went [to meet her]”
“I am glad this has all come out. The police need to be more helpful.”
Ms Newton has told the inquiry that she had asked former Chief Constable Kate Meynell why she had been told initially that Ian had died in a road traffic accident.
Asked if she ever found out why she had been misinformed, Ian’s partner said her family liaison officer told her the police officer who had told her this had been given the wrong information.
“She felt awful giving me that information.
But I told Mark [family liaison officer] to get back to her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, it was the person that gave her that information.”
The inquiry has heard that Ian Coates’ partner Elaine Newton was intially told he had died in a car accident.
She had to wait for four “agonising hours” to learn the truth, having intially been misinformed by police officers.
“They [police later on] looked shocked on their faces and said ‘you have got the wrong information. Ian’s been killed and he’s been stabbed.”
When asked by Rachel Langdale KC, counsel for the inquiry, what this felt like, she said: “I felt like he had died twice. The first information I accepted but the second one I couldn’t accept because it was two informations I had been given.
“I felt it was all not right. It was just a mess.”
“Because this happened, I felt like it was took away from me, so I kept myself more private. I shut myself away.”
We’re back at Mary Ward House in London for the Nottingham Inquiry’s second day of its fifth week or evidence.
Yesterday we heard from police officer Rob Griffin, who was Nottinghamshire Police’s assistant chief constable at the time was and chief officer on call when Valdo Calocane attacked.
Today we’ll hear from Elaine Newton, Ian Coates’ partner, and two of his three sons – James and Lee.
On Wednesday we expect to hear from the parents of the two students killed by Calocane – with Emma and David Webber and Dr Sanjoy Kumar and Dr Sinéad O’Malley-Kumar due to give evidence.
On Thursday we’ll hear from two of the three people who were injured by Calocane – Wayne Birkett and Sharon Miller. On the same day two police officers will give evidence.
The inquiry is not currently sitting on Friday.
The first four weeks of the Nottingham Inquiry into the June 2023 attacks by Valdo Calocane have revealed a series of missed opportunities and miscommunications across the police, the NHS, and the University of Nottingham – where Calocane and two of his victims had studied.
Hundreds of people have been asked to provide evidence to the inquiry and thousands of documents are being considered as part of the proceedings.
A lot of information has been disclosed as part of the judge-led process, but you can read the key points here.
Ian Coates had been living in Bulwell at the time of the Nottingham attacks and had previously lived in areas including Top Valley and Bestwood, the latter being where his three sons grew up.
The beloved family man’s career included a long spell as a self-employed painter and decorator before he moved to jobs at the Alderman Derbyshire school in Bulwell and the Huntingdon Academy in St Ann’s – where he had been on his way to work at the time of his death.
Ian was known as ‘Mr Christmas’ at Huntingdon for his legendary festive displays and the school described him as a “passionate advocate for enriching the lives of children.”
As a keen angler, Ian also took scores of young people on fishing trips around the country and his friends described him as a “giving and generous man” who had “left a massive hole” in Nottingham.
X (Twitter)