A nursing student who leapt from a window to flee the Nottingham triple killer years before he struck was told he could not be jailed because he was schizophrenic, an inquiry heard.
The young woman, an Italian national who can only be identified as Feven, said she was informed by police she ‘could have been killed’ had she not jumped down 12ft to escape mentally ill Valdo Calocane as he broke down her flat door.
Police also failed to link a similar incident less than 24 hours earlier at the same block of flats, partly because an officer investigating the case did not want to go through the log due to ‘data protection’ concerns, an inquiry heard.
Feven was left with a fractured back as a result of the fall and remains in constant pain, nearly six years on.
But she was ‘angry’ Calocane was never charged over the incident, despite officers recording he was ‘seeing demons and devils’.
It happened an hour after he was released by police for trying to break into another student’s flat under the delusion his mother was inside being raped.
Indeed, Nottinghamshire police investigating the second incident had no idea Calocane had been arrested earlier that day, while bodyworn footage was also lost, it has emerged.
The inquiry is examining how mentally ill Calocane was free to kill students Barney Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates in June 2023, despite being sectioned multiple times for a series of violent incidents.
Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber – known as Barney – and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were killed in Nottingham in a series of supposedly random knife attacks by one man
Giving evidence through an interpreter, Feven described how she was ‘very scared’ when she heard what she thought was ‘a group of thieves or someone wanting to hurt me’ banging on her front door on May 24 2020.
‘I couldn’t think that it could be one person being so aggressive,’ she said, telling the inquiry she leapt out of the window in just her night clothes.
She spent a week in hospital before being discharged to a friend’s house to continue her recovery, and was visited by police officer Richard Marsden who said Calocane would not be charged.
‘They said they tried doing anything they could, but because of his mental health problems, they mentioned (he was) schizophrenic, this person could not be jailed and he was therefore taken to a mental health institution, a psychiatric hospital,’ Feven told the inquiry.
A psychiatrist later decided Calocane did not have the mental ‘capacity’ to be responsible for his actions at the time.
‘I was very angry, I was very upset because the damage he had caused is going to be forever and I was so young,’ said Feven, who was 22 at the time.
‘I thought this was not enough, the psychiatric hospital was not enough. But because there were no other possibilities, I accepted it.’
The same officer described her as ‘brave’, she said.
Valdo Calocane, now 34, is serving an indefinite hospital order for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished reponsibility
‘If I had not jumped out of the window many things could have happened to me, they said he could have killed me or he could have been violent.’
Mr Marsden denied making this comment.
But he admitted he did not inform the victim she could challenge the decision not to progress the investigation.
And Mr Marsden, who initially described the victim’s injuries as ‘back pain’, agreed under questioning from inquiry chairman Deborah Taylor the incidents ‘could’ and ‘should’ have been linked.
His colleague Pc Gail Collins, who interviewed Calocane for the first incident, said she did not look into the police log about the suspect because of data protection reasons.
Inspector Katie Eustace, who was called to the first break-in, said she was ‘concerned’ by the police log which gave the impression there was a ‘slight reluctance’ by officers to pursue the original incident very thoroughly.
She also said there was nothing confirming Calocane had already been arrested.
She apologised that her bodyworn footage appeared to have been lost, and said she had not been given an explanation of its whereabouts by bosses.
Asked by lawyer Sophie Cartwright KC if she felt the case ‘was given the attention it deserved’, she replied: ‘No, I don’t think it was.’
The inquiry is looking into how failings allowed Calocane to go on his bloody rampage, which also left three members of the public with serious injuries after he mowed them down in Mr Coates’ van
He is serving an indefinite hospital order after admitting manslaughter with diminished responsibility.
The inquiry continues.