Starmer Calls for Inquiry Into Police and Mental Health Failures That Led to Nottingham Killings

Emma Webber, whose 19-year-old son Barnaby was stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane, outside Nottingham Crown Court in Nottingham, England, on Jan. 25, 2024. PA

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called for a public inquiry to look into mistakes by the police and others that may have led to the Nottingham attacks in June 2023, in which three people were killed and several others injured.

On Thursday, Valdo Calocane was given an indefinite hospital order after he admitted three counts of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

In the early hours of June 13, 2023 Calocane stabbed Nottingham University student Barnaby Webber and his friend Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and then school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, before stealing Mr. Coates’s van and trying to run over three other people.

After the sentencing Barnaby’s mother, Emma Webber, said Nottinghamshire Police’s Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin—who admitted police “should have done more” to arrest Calocane before the killings—had “blood on [his] hands.”

Ms. Webber met Sir Keir—a former director of public prosecutions—on Thursday evening and on Friday he called for a public inquiry.

He told ITV’s “This Morning” programme: “I am very worried by what appear to be a number of points at which action could have been taken that would have prevented this happening.”

Starmer: ‘Families Are Owed’ a Public Inquiry

“The family are saying that there needs to be an inquiry into that. I think they’re right about that. I think somebody outside of this, independent, needs to look at exactly what happened, what were the points of which there could have been an intervention and why it didn’t happen. That is the least that these families are owed,” added Sir Keir.

Julian Hendy, founder of the Hundred Families charity, which offers advice to families bereaved by people with mental health problems, welcomed Sir Keir’s call for a public inquiry.

He told The Epoch Times: “There are still a lot of questions to be answered about this case. A public inquiry is necessary to find out who knew what when.”

Mr. Hendy, who attended the sentencing hearing, said much of what was said in court did not “add up,” such as the fact Calocane, while apparently suffering from “florid psychosis,” travelled from Nottingham to London and back without harming anybody and then suddenly attacked the two students from behind in the middle of the night.

“It doesn’t add up, the story we are being told,” he said.

It emerged this week Calocane had assaulted a police officer in August 2022 and the following month a warrant for his arrest was issued after he failed to appear in court. That warrant was still outstanding at the time of the attacks in June 2023.

But Mr. Hendy said there were other incidents where Calocane attacked other people and was not charged, prior to the assault on the police officer.

Mr. Hendy said there were some similarities between Calocane’s case and that of Tedi Fanta Hagos, a mentally ill asylum seeker from Eritrea who stabbed to death a complete stranger, Steve Dempsey, in Oxford Street, central London, in July 2021.

Last year Mr. Dempsey’s sister Julie told The Epoch Times she was trying to get the coroner to complete the inquest into her brother, in order that numerous unanswered questions about Fanta could be settled.

A court artist sketch shows Valdo Calocane appearing at Nottingham Crown Court, in Nottingham, England, on Jan. 23, 2024. Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP

On Thursday, Nottinghamshire Police published a full timeline of their contact with Calocane.

Aside from the questions about why Calocane was not properly dealt with in the run up to the killings, the families are angry about the murder charges being dropped and him being given a hospital order rather than a life sentence.

‘Trial by Doctors’

Ms. Webber described it as a “trial by doctors” and claimed the families had been “railroaded” into accepting the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to accept his guilty plea to manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

Attorney General Victoria Prentis confirmed her office had received a referral arguing the sentence administered had been unduly lenient and she would be reviewing it.

Dr. Sanjoy Kumar (L), father of Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and Emma Webber (R), mother of Barnaby Webber, speak to journalists outside Nottingham Crown Court in Nottingham, England on Jan. 25, 2024. PA

On the steps of the court Ms. Webber, standing alongside members of the other victims’ families, said, “We were presented with a fait accompli that the decision had been made to accept manslaughter charges.”

“At no point during the previous five-and-a-half-months were we given any indication that this could conclude in anything other than murder,” she added.

The court heard Calocane—who was born in Guinea-Bissau—had first been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2019 and had been sectioned four times.

But his last contact with the mental health services was at least year before the killings.

Calocane will serve his sentence at Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside, a secure facility that has held a number of infamous killers, including the Moors Murderer Ian Brady.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We believe that it’s important that as the first action, that the relevant agencies look back and ensure that all the proper processes were followed and that reasonable steps that could have been taken were taken, to ensure that where there are lessons to be learned we do so. That is the first thing that needs to happen.”

PA Media contributed to this report.