I have met dozens of Valdo Calocanes. What he did just over a year ago in Nottingham was grotesque, but he was not an exceptional patient. His presentation, elusiveness and early pattern of contact with services are very familiar to someone like myself.
On a summer’s night in 2023, Calocane randomly killed three strangers in Nottingham while experiencing intense delusional beliefs arising from his untreated psychotic illness. He had had intermittent contact with his local NHS healthcare trust over two years, some of it while detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act. However, he was discharged from its community service back to his GP nine months before the killings, on the grounds that he had dropped out of contact with his mental health team. Criticism of Calocane’s management by trust staff, led by the Care Quality Commission’s recent report, has been scathing and almost universal.
