{"id":627861,"date":"2026-06-08T17:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627861\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T17:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:29:14","slug":"parents-of-nottingham-attack-victim-say-medics-must-breach-confidentiality-if-patient-is-risk-to-others-nottingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627861\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents of Nottingham attack victim say medics must breach confidentiality if patient is risk to others | Nottingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

The parents of a victim of the Nottingham<\/a> attacks have said medical staff have a duty to breach patient confidentiality if the person they are treating is a risk to others.<\/p>\n

The families of the victims of the June 2023 attacks spoke at a news conference in London on Monday after evidence concluded in a 14-week public inquiry into the attacks.<\/p>\n

They said local authorities had protected Valdo Calocane at the expense of public safety in the years before he stabbed Barnaby Webber, Grace O\u2019Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates to death. The families said the tragedy would happen again without immediate action by the government.<\/p>\n

Webber and O\u2019Malley-Kumar, both 19, and Coates, 65, were killed in the the early hours of 13 June 2023. Calocane, who has paranoid schizophrenia, was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in January 2024.<\/p>\n

Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O\u2019Malley-Kumar were killed in the early hours of 13 June 2023. Photograph: Nottinghamshire Police\/PA<\/p>\n

O\u2019Malley-Kumar\u2019s mother, Sinead O\u2019Malley-Kumar, said \u201ca lot of the fault lies\u201d with the psychiatrists involved in Calocane\u2019s care. She said she would \u201cnever forgive them for their lack of treatment and their incompetent discharge\u201d of him.<\/p>\n

The inquiry heard how Calocane was discharged from mental health services months before the attacks because healthcare workers could not find him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI blame the psychiatrists for discharging him,\u201d she said. \u201cI do not believe they\u2019re fit to practise and I think the regulator does need to take a look at some of these psychiatrists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public inquiry, led by the retired judge Deborah Taylor KC, was set up to examine the lead-up to the attacks and the response. The hearings exposed the repeated contact medical staff and police had with Calocane and a string of violent attacks he had committed before June 2023.<\/p>\n

Calocane was sectioned four times before June 2023, the first in May 2020. Many of the interventions happened after Calocane had committed a violent attack. During his second hospital admission, the inquiry heard how a doctor warned Calocane could \u201cend up killing someone\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the inquiry, two police forces apologised to bereaved families and survivors of the Nottingham attacks<\/a> for failing to act on an arrest warrant for Calocane that was issued 10 months before he killed Webber, O\u2019Malley-Kumar and Coates.<\/p>\n

The inquiry heard about the failure to share information across different agencies including police and medical staff as well as with Calocane\u2019s family. In evidence given at the inquiry, Calocane\u2019s mother, Celeste, said she was not aware of decisions made about her son\u2019s care until after the June 2023 attacks \u2013 including his fourth hospital admission in 2022.<\/p>\n

She said Calocane had withdrawn his consent for details to be shared with her in December 2021 but she said he did not have the capacity to make that decision.<\/p>\n

Speaking after a news conference in central London, Grace\u2019s parents, Sanjoy Kumar and Sinead O\u2019Malley-Kumar, who are both medical doctors, said medical staff had a duty to breach confidentiality guidelines if public safety was at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the safety of society as a whole, even as a doctor, overrides the autonomy of a single patient,\u201d Kumar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are well-laid guidelines, if a doctor knows that a patient may bring harm to someone else, the doctors are obliged to actually break that confidentiality. It didn\u2019t happen in our case.\u201d<\/p>\n

From left, Lee Coates, James Coates, Darren Coates, Emma Webber, David Webber, Sanjoy Kumar and Sinead O\u2019Malley-Kumar give a press conference after evidence to the inquiry into the attacks concluded. Photograph: Yui Mok\/PA<\/p>\n

The families of Webber, O\u2019Malley-Kumar and Coates said the inquiry had laid bare a \u201clack of candour and blatant cover-ups\u201d and left them with \u201cmany more questions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Coates\u2019s son Lee added: \u201cIt has shown the catastrophic failings from all services and agencies involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emma Webber, Barnaby\u2019s mother, said the inquiry hearings had been \u201cbrutal, bruising and harrowing beyond measure\u201d, adding: \u201cMental health services failed to treat and manage. Police repeatedly failed to act. Agencies didn\u2019t talk. Individuals chose to look the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor is expected to hear closing statements from core participants in the inquiry in September and is expected to publish her final report with recommendations next year.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Healthcare said: \u201cLessons and recommendations for the NHS<\/a>, and many other organisations, are likely to emerge from the Nottingham Inquiry and we are committed to acting upon them and working with our partners to reduce the risk of terrible events like this happening in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parents of a victim of the Nottingham attacks have said medical staff have a duty to breach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-627861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}