Doctors warned about Nottingham killer three years prior to horror attacks
Doctors warned authorities that Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane ‘could kill someone’ three years before he stabbed and murdered three people in the city last year.
Calocane stabbed and killed former Bulwell Academy caretaker Ian Coates, aged 65, and 19-year-old Nottingham University students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar on June 13 last year.
Now it has emerged that the warnings about Calocane were already being voiced by medical experts three years earlier.
The warning was given by one psychiatrist while the medical team reviewed Calocane was in hospital in 2020 and was set down in medical records held by Nottinghamshire NHS trust.
The psychiatrist wrote: “There seems to be no insight or remorse and the danger is that this will happen again and perhaps Valdo will end up killing someone.”
But Caloane’s family only received the report containing the warning after he had been sentenced.
Speaking to the BBC, Elias and Celeste, Calocane's brother and mother, said the mental health system was ‘broken’.
Between 2020 and 2022, Valdo Calocane was arrested and sectioned four times under the Mental Health Act.
During the second of these, the psychiatrist made his observations about him potentially killing someone.
He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic but his family were not told.
During his second sectioning he lied to doctors that he was no longer hearing voices so he could released from hospital as he believed the voices he heared were real people.
After being sectioned a third time, he was deemed well enough to be discharged back into the care of his community health team after only three weeks.
And when he was sectioned for a fourth time in January 2022 he family were not informed as Calocane told his mental health team he did not want them to know.
While in hospital, he reportedly repeated missed appointments and did not take tablets and in September 2022 he was discharged back to his GP for the final time.
His mother described the mental health teams as ‘washing their hands of him’.
He also lied about his whereabouts, telling his family that he was living in Coventry – which is where they thought he was on the day of the killings.
At his trial, he was given an indefinite hospital order for the manslaughter of three people – to the fury of the victims’ famliies who said Calocane had been effectively ‘allowed to get away with murder’.
They have called repeatedly for a public inquiry into the process, something echoed by Calocane’s family.
Elias told the BBC: “Yes, commission a public inquiry, yes, we need some strong recommendations.
"But we can't just say, we'll just wait until it finishes how many years down the line and then do something about it then.
"Something needs to happen now.”
Celeste added: “The system is not fit for purpose.”
A Care Quality Commission review of the care of Valdo Calocane by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) is due to be published this week.
In a statement, Ifti Majid, NHFT chief executive, said: “I have committed to do everything within my power to prevent such a tragedy reoccurring.
“We are working with our colleagues across Nottinghamshire Healthcare to continue to improve the safety and quality of our services for patients.”