The police officer leading the investigation into the Nottingham killings has apologised for failing to test the killer for drugs following claims the mistake allowed the perpetrator to get a lesser sentence.
Detective Superintendent dLeigh Sanders turned to face the families of Valdo Calocane’s three victims at a public inquiry as he admitted officers should have taken samples in custody.
Paranoid schizophrenic Calocane was handed an indefinite hospital order after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility for killing students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barney Webber, and grandfather Ian Coates, during a stabbing rampage in 2023.
The families remain furious that Calocane was not put on trial for murder – a charge the senior investigating officer said he believed would have been justified given how Calocane carried out his bloody rampage.
And so Mr Sanders’ admission before the probe in London today was particularly significant given that evidence of drug use could have negated Calocane’s manslaughter pleas, meaning he would face murder charges instead.
The inquiry heard families pressed police for answers about what ‘toxicology and samples were taken in custody’ in the months after the atrocity, which also saw three other members of the public seriously injured.
But Mr Sanders, who has since retired, told grieving families Calocane had ‘no history of drug abuse’, and so those tests were not done.
Turning to face the families as he gave his evidence today, Mr Sanders said: ‘At the time that we were investigating and on the work we had done around the inquiry, there is a complete absence of any reference to drugs or drug use or abuse.
Valdo Calocane, now 34, has been jailed for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished reponsibility
DS Leigh Sanders, who has since retired, turned to apologise to the families of Calocane’s victims for failing to test the killer for drugs
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
‘But I do concede in hindsight, if a sample of head hair had been taken, then if nothing else, we would have examined it to show, in my opinion, the absence or otherwise.
‘I apologise that we didn’t do it.
‘Again, I will extend the apology, particularly to David Webber and Sanjoy Kumar (the fathers of Barney and Grace, respectively), they are the individuals who within the email have raised, I would suggest very eloquently, their concerns.’
He said he used the word ‘murder’ deliberately when referring to the killings in emails with the Crown Prosecution Service.
And he suggested other officers were unhappy that the weight of psychiatric evidence meant prosecutors could not push for a murder conviction.
He said: ‘My view at that time was he (Calocane) didn’t seem to be under duress, he appeared to be making rational choices.
‘My impression was he was acting on his own free will.
‘My view at that time was I believed he had murdered – in cold blood – three people.’
He added: ‘There were officers who believed he commited murder.’
Mr Sanders denied charging Calocane quickly in order to shut down stories of police failings after it emerged officers called to a warehouse fight involving Calocane the month before the Nottingham atrocity failed to spot he was wanted for assaulting a police officer two years prior.
He told the inquiry: ‘There were stories going to appear in the press that were going to undermine the investigation. Clearly that gave me real cause for concern.’
He said some of the reporting was ’embellished’.
The inquiry is examining how Calocane was left on the streets and free to kill despite a history of violence and having been sectioned several times in the three years before he struck, on June 13 2023.
The inquiry continues.