The father of a gifted teenager killed in the Nottingham stabbings said the atrocity was ‘totally avoidable’ and called on those involved in the catalogue of failures to be sacked.
Dr Sanjoy Kumar said staff who failed to do their jobs properly in the build-up to and aftermath of the 2023 atrocity have been able to shelter behind shoulder-shrugging and an unrelenting conviction they did the right thing in the case of Valdo Calocane.
Dr Kumar’s 19-year-old daughter Grace O’Malley-Kumar, her friend and fellow student Barney Webber, also 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, were stabbed to death by mentally ill Calocane three years ago, with an inquiry currently exposing how a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence was free to kill.
He was handed an indefinite hospital order after he pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – something the victims’ families have repeatedly criticised the Crown Prosecution Service over.
And Dr Kumar said he would explore every legal avenue possible to have the case returned to court so that Calocane could be tried for murder, claiming the lesser manslaughter conviction was ‘unsafe’.
In an interview with the Mail’s Trial+ podcast, Dr Kumar said he and wife Sinead O’Malley-Kumar have been upset by witnesses ‘with the audacity’ to tell the inquiry: ‘We didn’t do this, but it may not have prevented the attacks.’
He said: ‘I can’t understand the gall of people who can come to an inquiry and say something like that to you.
‘Let’s not over-complicate it. Let’s go back to the days where people just did the jobs that they were paid for.
Grace O’Malley-Kumar died while trying to save her friend and fellow student Barney Webber during a frenzied knife attack in 2023
Her father, Dr Sanjoy Kumar, said those who failed in allowing the killer to strike should lose their jobs
‘We don’t need changes of law, because in this case there was nothing technical. People simply didn’t do their jobs.
‘The Nottingham attacks were totally, totally avoidable. If you were involved in that and something went catastrophically wrong, then you need to be sacked.’
The court has heard Calocane was sectioned four times under the Mental Health Act in the years leading up to the atrocity.
He also had a history of violence requiring police involvement dating back to 2020.
This included terrifying a fellow student so much she leapt out of a window to escape him and fractured her back, assaulting a flatmate and punching a police officer.
He also hit two work colleagues and was spotted reaching for a knife before fleeing the scene the month before he carried out his deadly Nottingham rampage.
Yet Calocane was never convicted, and when police did take him into custody, experts routinely released him into the community.
His behaviour was so troubling that a doctor warned in July 2020 that Calocane ‘will end up killing someone’, yet he was dischagred two weeks later.
It meant Calocane was free to stalk the streets of Nottingham in the early hours of June 13 2023, emerging from the shadows to attack Barney, and then Grace, who valiantly came to his aid.
Calocane then ambushed Mr Coates, stealing his work van and leaving him fatally wounded. He used the van to crash into pedestrians before finally being stopped by police.
Grace’s parents, Dr Kumar, and Dr Sinead O’Malley, and brother James O’Malley-Kumar, speaking at a press conference after Grace was awarded a posthumous George Medal for bravery
Grace, pictured with her parents and brother, James, was a talented hockey and cricket player, and was training to become a doctor
Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber – known as Barney – and were killed in Nottingham in a series of supposedly random knife attacks by one man
Valdo Calocane, now 34, has been jailed for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished reponsibility
The inquiry in London is not even at the half-way stage, yet the families said the probe has already shone a spotlight on failings from all agencies involved.
‘When you put all of those blocks together, they just won’t stand up,’ Dr Kumar said.
‘And I’ll actually be quite amazed, really, if this conviction (for manslaughter) is found to be safe, because I don’t think it is.
‘There are so many holes in just the way this case was built by the CPS and rushed through that I think by the end of the inquiry, I really think that you will probably question, is this conviction safe?
‘And the answer to that is, I don’t think it is the way it stands.’
Dr Kumar also paid tribute to his daughter, a medical student at Nottingham who represented England at hockey and played cricket at county level, for selflessly taking on Calocane as the powerfully built fiend attacked her friend.
She was posthumously awarded the George Medal for bravery.
He said: ‘Of course, as a father, you kind of get selfish, and you think: I wish you’d run away.
‘She was only a girl, but that wasn’t in her DNA. She would never leave a mate behind.
‘I was a father who was totally in love with his daughter, as so many dads across the country are.
‘And whilst I would try and be strict and direct her, she always melted my heart every time I looked at her. I couldn’t love her more.’
The inquiry is due to resume on Monday.
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