Police never questioned a woman who said Valdo Calocane had mental health problems dating back to 2013
Valdo Calocane pictured outside the MI5 building in 2021(Image: Nottingham Inquiry)
Nottinghamshire Police has been told it should have interrogated a woman who believed triple killer Valdo Calocane had been involved in an incident involving ‘violence and an animal’ years before his attacks.
A senior officer says he was not sure that the woman’s evidence would have added “any more value” to the investigation into Calocane – who brutally killed University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and grandad Ian Coates in the early hours of June 13, 2023.
Initial evidence about Calocane’s time living in Wales was presented at a hearing of the Nottingham Inquiry on Wednesday (March 18), though the mother of one of his victims says what has been heard so far is “barely scratching the surface.”
The inquiry, led by Her Honour Deborah Taylor, is examining the response to the attacks and whether they could have been prevented.
The inquiry was told on Wednesday that someone who lived with Valdo Calocane in shared accommodation whilst attending Pembrokeshire College, where she believed Calocane was a cleaner, contacted Nottinghamshire Police after the June 13 attacks.
The woman said she believed Calocane had a history of mental illness dating back to 2013 and described an incident involving “violence and an animal”.
Nottinghamshire Police never questioned this woman and a police log said this was because the woman lived in Wales.
Yet when asked why the woman was not questioned by Tim Moloney KC, representing the families of the victims, retired Detective Superintendent Leigh Sanders said on Wednesday: “My view on that would be how does that add any more value over and above the information subsequently obtained in the medical records and the updates from families in relation to more recent mental health from 2020?
“Whether correct or otherwise, that’s the rationale as to why that wouldn’t have been progressed.”
Retired DS Leigh Sanders giving evidence at the inquiry(Image: Nottingham Inquiry)
Mr Moloney continued: “Would you not have thought that in fact the psychiatrists who come to examine this man will want the whole medical history and if there had been problems before they would need to know about that.”
“They would probably have access, surely, to all of the medical records in existence,” former DS Sanders replied.
Barnaby Webber’s mum Emma told Nottinghamshire Live: “We’ve asked all the way along ‘what’s this’? There’s more to it. There has to be more to it.
“He came to this country when he was 16, via Portugal, originally from Guinea-Bissau. What was he doing for all of those years? Surely that’s of relevance, and you would expect them to interrogate that.
“The fact that somebody bothers to call in after this most serious of [attacks], international level attention, with information to say ‘I lived with him’.
“It wasn’t like ‘oh, I met him’. He was a cleaner at the college, she was a student, and he behaved weirdly and he clearly had mental health issues and I know that there was some abuse of an animal or something.
“That should be enough of a red flag to go and interrogate, because that’s clear evidence, isn’t it?
“If that is proven, that he had mental health issues in as early as 2013. I don’t believe his medical records have ever fully been seen because summary reports from GPs don’t go into great detail.
“All of that will out, and we have to make sure all of that will out because today, almost just felt like it was scratching the surface.”
The public inquiry in London continues.