A doctor warned that Valdo Calocane’s mental illness was so severe he could kill someone, three years before he stabbed three people to death in Nottingham, his medical records show.
Calocane’s family, who were only shown the documents after he was sentenced to indefinite detention in a maximum-security hospital for the attacks, have criticized the missed opportunities that they say could have prevented the killings.
They shared a 300-page summary of Calocane’s medical notes with the BBC programme Panoramawhich they say shows how much he has been let down by the NHS.
In June 2023, Calocane fatally stabbed 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and a school caretaker, Ian Coates, 65, in Nottingham. He also injured three people while driving a stolen van.
The victims’ families are said to have complained to the BBC that the programme was made without their involvement. A source close to the families told the Daily Telegraph that they have demanded the inclusion of a disclaimer stating that the programme was made without their knowledge or consent.
They are reportedly unhappy that the BBC only gave the families a summary of the programme’s content and not all the details.
Calocane had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the three people on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and to the attempted murder of three others. His sentence was referred to the Court of Appeal in February, but three judges ruled that the hospital order was not “demonstrably unduly lenient”, and said the court could not ignore medical evidence relating to his paranoid schizophrenia.
In 2020, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was discharged to the care of a community mental health team. He was hospitalized four times in less than two years. The second time he was hospitalized was in July 2020 after he forcibly broke into a neighbor’s apartment.
Notes from a medical meeting after the attack show a psychiatrist said Calocane showed no “insight or remorse and there is a danger that this will happen again and that Valdo may even kill someone,” the BBC’s Panorama reported.
Speaking to the BBC for the first time, his brother and mother, Elias and Celeste Calocane, said the mental health system was “broken” and the “tragedy could have been prevented”.
They also want a public inquiry and mental health reform.
His brother said, “I don’t think he ever really got any treatment. He was kind of managed, so he had interventions. But as far as a proper treatment plan, I’m not sure we ever saw that.”
The family says they knew Calocane was ill but were never told he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
According to the BBC, Calocane’s medical records show that in the autumn of 2020 he admitted to lying to doctors about no longer hearing voices so he could be discharged from hospital. In 2022, the community mental health team referred him to his GP, on the day a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with the assault on a police officer.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust told the BBC it was determined to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. The health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, will publish a report on Calocane’s care on Tuesday.
The Nottingham Attacks – A Search for Answers airs Monday at 8pm on BBC One.