James Coates lives just around the corner from where his father, Ian, was killed by Valdo Calocane during his night of violence in Nottingham last year.
He remembers 13 June 2023 vividly, waking up to the news about the attacks before making his way around dozens of police cordons as he headed towards work in the city centre. He heard that one of the victims had been found on Magdala Road, close to his home.
It was not until he was heading home and received an Instagram message from a family friend saying: “I can’t believe what has happened to your dad,” that Coates first had an inkling his father was involved.
“It made no sense, we had no idea what was going on,” the 38-year-old said. “I remember ringing my partner and saying: ‘I think my dad is dead,’ and that’s when it hit me. We were desperately trying to put all the pieces together and speak to the police – we only found out for sure 20 minutes before it was announced on the news.”
Although police had contacted the next of kin, it had taken a while for the information to be passed on to Coates and his two brothers, Lee and Darren.
He also said the family had been reluctant to speak to the media at first, and that meant there was less information about his 65-year-old father than the other victims in the days immediately after the attacks. When he spoke in front of thousands of people at a vigil in the city centre, he was terrified.
“It’s my worst nightmare talking publicly,” said Coates. “It makes me uncomfortable. The last thing I want to do is be in the media but I’m doing it for a reason and that’s to make sure someone is held accountable. People have lost their kids, I’ve lost my dad, and we just can’t let it slide.”
Along with the families of Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, two 19-year-old university students who were also killed that night, the Coates family are campaigning for a tougher sentence for Calocane, as well as a public inquiry to examine how he was able to carry out the attacks.
James said he felt the 32-year-old’s sentence – a hospital order after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to paranoid schizophrenia – was like he had “just got away with it”.
“I’m happy that he’s inside and if they say he’s going to be in the hospital definitely the rest of his life, he will never be released, I could be happy with that. But there’s no punishment for what he’s done,” Coates said.
“We don’t want, when we’re older, our kids getting the phone call saying he is going to be released and they have to fight it. I don’t doubt that he’s got mental health issues. But to say that he’s got no culpability and that he’s not responsible for his actions, it’s disgusting.”
Like the other families, Coates said he believed a murder charge was almost guaranteed.
He said a public inquiry was the only way to examine both failings by the police – who did not carry out an arrest warrant for Calocane in the months running up to the attacks – and the mental health services that treated Calocane when he had been sectioned four times before the killings.
“Our biggest fear is that it won’t all come together as a bigger picture,” Coates said. “Something big has gone wrong, and it’s gone wrong for a long time, and we need to see some sort of change.”
The family are still struggling with the mental toll of what happened to their father, who was killed by Calocane as he was driving his van to the school where he worked as a caretaker just four months before he was due to retire.
They hope to continue his legacy by helping disadvantaged young people take up fishing, something Ian Coates was passionate about.
“He was just a really down to earth, nice guy. It’s apparent that he wanted to push people in the right direction, working in schools and helping young people,” his son said.
“We went to see the winter wonderland at school that he had set up over the years – all the kids did their own version in honour of him. It was nice to see the impact he had on the world and not just us kids. It was quite overwhelming.”
James often has to drive along Magdala Road where his father was killed, but hopes the family can one day look at it as a positive place to remember their father.
“I’ll always look to where the flowers were. After it had happened, my brother was struggling really bad and he’d go in the middle of the night and just sit there playing my dad’s favourite music on Magdala Road,” said James. “It will always have a place in our heart.”
