Nottingham stabbing victim’s mother’s anger after NHS left Valdo Calocane ‘free to slaughter’
Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates were killed by Valdo Calocane in Nottingham last year
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A devastated mother has voiced her anger at the NHS for leaving Valdo Calocane “free to slaughter” her son and two others.
Emma Webber, 51, mother of victim Barnaby Webber who was stabbed to death last year in Nottingham, called for a complete restructure of mental health services to prevent similar attacks.
Her comments come following a damning report into his care, published on Tuesday by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which found the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) mental health unit “minimised or omitted” key details of the serious risk he posed to others.
It questioned how well the trust engaged with Calocane’s family, who raised concerns about his mental state, along with how well his discharge was planned.
Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic, stabbed 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar as they returned from a night out in June last year, before going on to kill 65-year-old Ian Coates.
Calocane was handed an indefinite hospital order in January after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Prosecutors accepted his not guilty pleas to murder after multiple medical experts concluded he had paranoid schizophrenia.
Ms Webber told The Sun: “The mental health services in Nottingham washed their hands of this dangerous individual and left him free to slaughter Barnaby, Grace and Ian.
“What we have surmised is the professionals did no proper risk assessment when they discharged Calocane.
“It wouldn’t have taken much looking back in the case files to see he was seriously mentally ill and violent. This attack was always going to happen — it was just a case of when, not if.”
She added: “As a mother who has lost her son, no end of ‘we’re stretched, limited resources, waiting lists’ will ever be an excuse.
“We need to get to the heart of what is going so badly wrong in our communities and analyse why people are carrying out these attacks.”
The CQC findings come as an investigation by the magazine The Doctor, shared exclusively with The Independent, reveals Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has received dozens of warnings since 2014 from coroners highlighting failures following the deaths of its patients.
The investigation found that concerns about the trust’s services – many similar to those in the CQC findings – have been raised repeatedly for several years and local experts say insufficient action has been taken and lessons are not being learnt.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said the killings by Calocane “could have been prevented and should have been prevented”.
He also said the prime minister is “actively considering” how best to set up a judge-led inquiry into the case.
Mr Streeting told Sky News: “What the Care Quality Commission have uncovered is deeply distressing.
“Most of all for the families of Grace, Barnaby and Ian, who, in addition to having to deal with the unbearable and unimaginable grief they’re going through, are doing so in the knowledge that this could have been prevented and should have been prevented.
“That there wasn’t a single point of failure but multiple and fundamental failures on the part of the NHS to manage Valdo Calocane’s treatment in a way that not only kept him safe, but most importantly, kept others safe.”