Keir Starmer has added his voice to calls for an inquiry into any failings that led to the fatal Nottingham knife attacks.
The attorney general is considering whether judges should review the sentence of the killer, Valdo Calocane, after receiving a submission that it could be unduly lenient.
A judge handed down a restricted hospital order to the 32-year-old, who has paranoid schizophrenia and whose pleas to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility were accepted this week.
The families of the three people he killed have reacted angrily to the sentencing and accused prosecutors of a fait accompli in accepting a manslaughter charge rather than pursuing a murder verdict.
They said the search would continue for answers from police, health authorities and the Crown Prosecution Service about “missed opportunities”.
Starmer, a former head of the CPS, said the deaths were “absolutely awful” as he backed the demand for an inquiry into the case.
The Labour leader told ITV’s This Morning: “As far as the sentence is concerned, obviously there are mental health issues in this particular case, and the attorney general has got the power to review it, and I think that probably makes sense, and have it double checked by the court of appeal.
“But I think alongside the sentence, I am very worried by what appear to be a number of points at which action could have been taken that would have prevented this happening. The family are saying there needs to be an inquiry into that. I think they’re right about that. I think somebody outside of this, independent, needs to look at exactly what happened, what were the points at which there could have been an intervention and why it didn’t happen. That is the least that these families are owed.”
Calocane, who goes by the name Adam Mendes, denied murdering Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19-year-old students, and Ian Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
He also admitted the attempted murder of three other people whom he ran over in a van. After the crown accepted his pleas, Calocane was sentenced at Nottingham crown court on Thursday to indefinite detention in a high-security hospital.
A spokesperson for the attorney general, Victoria Prentis, confirmed her office had received a referral arguing the sentence been unduly lenient.
It gives the cabinet minister 28 days from sentencing to review the request and decide whether to refer the case to the court of appeal to determine whether the sentence was appropriate. Only one referral is required to trigger the process.
Webber’s mother, Emma, criticised the CPS decision to downgrade the charge from murder. However, the attorney general’s considerations are unlikely to look at whether the correct charge was pursued.
Any person or institution can ask for a sentence to be reviewed if they have reason to think it is unduly lenient.
Calocane, who studied mechanical engineering at Nottingham University, stabbed O’Malley-Kumar and Webber in the early hours of 13 June last year when they were walking home from a night out.
He went on to stab Coates, who was driving to work, before stealing his van and driving it into pedestrians in the city centre. Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller sustained serious injuries but survived.
Calocane was sectioned under the Mental Health Act four times before the killings. After he was discharged from hospital in 2022, several attempts were made to contact him but no response was received.
At the time of the attacks, a warrant for Calocane’s arrest was outstanding after he had failed to appear in court nine months earlier for the alleged assault of a police officer while he was being sectioned.
