‘Love always wins’: Nottingham stands together in aftermath of brutal triple killing
As Nottingham comes to terms with the seemingly random violence that claimed three lives, there is a sense of collective guilt that the city could not protect those who died, writes Colin Drury
At 3am on Tuesday morning, Christian McMahon-Walsh was one of hundreds of students leaving Pryzm nightclub in Nottingham.
They’d been celebrating the end of the academic year in traditional fashion: with drinks deals, cheesy pop music and an air of anticipation for the coming summer. As they spilled out onto the streets afterwards, the night was still warm.
“It was a good night,” the 19-year-old said. “Everyone was happy they’d got through exams and looking forward to a couple of months off. A lot of people were going home this week so it was a bit of a goodbye session.”
Two of those students, we now know, will never make it home.
On Thursday, Mr McMahon-Walsh was among thousands of people attending a vigil in Nottingham city centre after Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, were stabbed to death shortly after leaving the club.
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A third man, much-loved school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, was also fatally knifed during a horrifying series of seemingly random 4am attacks.
Valdo Calocane, 31, has been charged with their murders and the attempted murder of three others injured when they were hit by a van in the city centre.
“It feels so surreal,” said Mr McMahon-Walsh at that vigil in the city’s Old Market Square on Thursday. “How can you go on a night out like that and just never get home? It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t right.”
He himself – an aerospace student from Newcastle – used to live close to Ilkeston Road where Grace and Barnaby were stabbed.
“Nottingham’s a student city and half the people living here will have walked home after a night out,” he said. “It could have been anyone of us. I think that’s why it’s so shocking. It’s so close to home. I knew people who knew them. And they were just doing what we all do. How can you even begin to comprehend it?”
Nottingham is, this weekend, a city still reeling.
Four days after Tuesday’s tragic events, a profound sense of shock remains tangible. Nothing of this nature – a seemingly random series of killings – has ever happened here before.
It feels to many like an attack on the fabric of this East Midlands city itself: on its reputation for being safe, friendly and welcoming, and on the hundreds of thousands of people here – like Grace and Barnaby and Ian – who make it special.
“We’ve never had anything like this,” council leader David Mellen told The Independent on Friday afternoon. “Of course, we have knife crime but there’s never been anything with this kind of trail of violence.
“It feels similar to Dunblane or Hungerford, albeit with not so many people losing their lives… and, it has shattered the comfort and the confidence people have of walking about safely but I hope and pray that will not last.”
Twenty years ago, he pointed out, Nottingham had something of a reputation for gun violence and gangland crime. The national tabloids – indeed, the local newspaper – briefly nicknamed it Shottingham so often did incidents occur here. In the year, 2004-05, there were an astonishing 21 murders.
But painstaking work by police – including the jailing of several gangland figures – is credited with transforming that reputation.
“We have far lower crime levels than we did 20 years ago,” said Mr Mellen, a one-time teacher who has been council leader for four years. “People feel safe here and the fact you have students walking home at four in the morning is a sort of testament to that… And, it will take time, but we will come together and overcome this.”
The exact course of events on Tuesday remains unclear and is, in any case, now subject to legal proceedings.
But medical student Grace and history scholar Barnaby – who were both studying at the University of Nottingham – were found stabbed to death in Ilkeston Road, west of the city centre, shortly after 4am.
Sometime later, Ian Coates was flagged down while driving his van two miles away in Magdala Road. He was stabbed and his van stolen. Shortly after that, the van was used to run over a man in Milton Street about a mile away before two more people were hit in the Sherwood Street area.
Nottinghamshire Police say the vehicle was finally stopped in Maples Street where a 31-year-old man was Tasered and arrested at about 5.30am.
He has since been named as Valdo Amissao Mendes Calocane, a dual Guinea-Bissau/Portuguese national who had settled status in the UK through his Portuguese citizenship and had himself previously studied at the University of Nottingham.
It all meant that, as this city of just 330,000 people woke up that day, they did so to a centre cordoned off in six separate areas and with a tram and bus system completely shut down.
“It was just utter shock,” said Dan Shipmen, a learning support worker with Nottingham College, who attended Thursday’s vigil. “I was seeing the news come through all day and I couldn’t really fit what I was hearing with the city I know and love. This is a safe place, and it’s terrifying this could happen. And it does make you think about your own behaviour. You know: can I do this? Will I be okay if I do that?”
As someone who works with teenagers every day, he warned of potential long-term mental health effects in a city with more than 40,000 students.
“Young people are so resilient but I don’t think you can overestimate the impact of something like this happening on the streets they walk down and the places they know,” the 23-year-old said. “A lot of them have been talking about it the last couple of days, trying to process it; and the thing I keep hearing is how [the victims] were just doing what we’ve all done a hundred times before. That’s what makes it scary.”
Another emotion seems prominent here too: a sense of collective guilt that the city chosen by Grace and Barnaby for their studies could not protect them.
“Their parents trusted us with them,” said one 51-year-old woman who asked not to be named. “And we didn’t keep them safe. They sent them here and we haven’t sent them back.”
It was a point echoed by 22-year-old graduate Millie Warsop. “It feels like we’ve let them down,” she said. “I’m so sorry for their families. I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”
Millie herself attended Thursday’s vigil wearing a Nottingham Forest shirt.
Ian Coates was a massive NFFC fan and his family had earlier suggested people don their shirts as a sign of respect. So many heeded the call that, at first glimpse, this could have been a sporting celebration. An occasional shout of “You Redssss,” was heard throughout. A mountain of flowers, meanwhile, slowly built up outside the Grade II* listed Council House.
The event itself – attended by about 4,000 people – was as heart-breaking as one would imagine.
As a single police helicopter hovered above Old Market Square, family members – as well as local politicians, educational leaders and faith representatives – addressed the thousands of people who had turned up.
In one especially devastating moment, James O’Malley-Kumar, the younger brother of Grace, told the multitude to “cherish every moment” they spend with loved ones. “You just never know when it will end,” he said before breaking down.
Small but devastating portraits were painted of the three.
Grace: fun loving, hard-working and sports-mad. She would, her father Dr Sanjoy Kumar said, have spent her second year in Nottingham working as a junior doctor at the local hospital. “That’s been taken from us,” he said. “We were four, and now we are three.”
Barnaby: sports mad and fun-loving too, and a wannabe RAF pilot. “I’m not sure, really, how a history degree in Nottingham was a part of that plan,” his mother Emma mused. “Maybe he planned to fly Spitfires.”
And Ian: a school caretaker with the emphasis on the care; a man who had taken dozens of struggling youngsters under his wing and helped them find their feet by taking them fishing; a man who was, by all accounts, never too busy to rescue a football off a school roof or get involved in a year six water fight.
“It feels like he’s touched a lot of hearts over the years,” said James, one of his three sons who all wore Forest shirts. “More than what we assumed and knew. Some beautiful comments.”
There were repeated vows that the killings would not lead to more hate.
“The monstrous individual who has shattered our lives will not define us,” said Emma Webber. “I know he will receive the retribution he deserves. But this evil person is just that, he is just a person. Please hold no hate towards any colour, sex or religion.”
It was a point echoed by Dr Kumar. “Imagine a world of love and no violence,” he told the crowd. “Just imagine that world.”
Now, for Nottingham itself, the challenge is perhaps how to recover from an incident so shocking it made global headlines; how, in fact, to make a city with more love and less violence a reality.
The key may be in the collective solidarity shown this week.
Because, while the devastation remains undoubtedly raw, there is a clear determination here to come together; to be stronger; to cherish each other.
“It’s mixed emotions right now,” said one attendant at the vigil, Emily Jepson, 22. “I’m so devastated for the families, so horrified about what has happened. But I look around at all these people and I’ve never been more proud of Nottingham.”
For MP Alex Norris – who represents the constituency of Nottingham North – such an attitude is key.
“We are here united in grief,” he told the crowd. “I hope that gives a little bit of hope for the future because what comes in the days, weeks and months ahead is going to be very, very difficult. We are going to need each other. The families are going to need our support. But love wins. Love always wins. And we will deal with this as we deal with everything: Nottingham together.”