Following the fatal stabbing by Valdo Calocane of two Nottingham university students and a school caretaker last June, police initially liaised with counter-terrorism officers as they searched for a motive. It soon emerged that, in the normal sense of the word, there wasn’t one. Calocane had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia three years previously, and had a history of violence when unwell. Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates had the tragic misfortune to encounter him on such an occasion.
Nothing can bring back those lives now. But as the review of Calocane’s care and treatment by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS foundation trust makes agonisingly clear, there were steps that could and should have been taken to mitigate the risk of such horror occurring. Analysing why they were not made, and revising national guidelines accordingly, will be fundamental to reducing risks to public safety from similar cases in the future.
