A Familiar Theme and a Personal Experience

Followers of this blog will have noticed that there has been no activity here since just before Christmas. This is because I have been abroad for two months, enjoying the weather in the Philippines. We all go on holiday supposedly to "get away from it all". My experience is that sometimes "it" comes looking for you. While away, I read press reports on the horrific triple murder in Nottingham last year, and the subsequent trial. The murderer, one Valdo Calocane (32), was reported as having mental health problems. This raised a red flag for me, as this is symptomatic of an issue in which I have taken an interest for a number of years. Now that I have returned to the UK, I can give this terrible case my full attention.

 As is well known to regular readers of this blog, I have written about the murders carried out by mental health patients of innocent members of the public for a number of years. All the cases that I have featured have been shocking and horrific, but this incident has surpassed them by dint of the number of innocent victims' deaths. All previous cases have followed a pattern: a mental health patient has randomly attacked and killed a single member of the public. In this horrible event, three innocent people have died and three others injured in one day by a single offender, in this case, Calocane. Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, 19 year-old students, were fatally stabbed on 13 June last year along with Ian Coates, 65, who was a school caretaker approaching retirement. All three were stabbed to death in the street. Calocane took Mr Coates' van and drove into the city centre where he mowed down three pedestrians: Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller, injuring them all. Calocane is clearly in a different league from previous attackers, despite sharing similar mental health issues.

Valdo Calocane, seen above, aka Adam Mendes, was born in Guinea-Bissau in 1991.His family moved to Madeira when he was three, and then to Lisbon, Portugal when he was eight. He and his family came to the UK in 2007 when he was 16. According to his defence lawyer and his family, his mental health problems began in 2019.  According to the BBC:

"Elias Calocane told police he first became aware his brother was suffering from mental health problems while he was studying for his degree. He apparently believed he was being spied on by his housemates and by MI6, and that his family was under threat. He was prescribed anti-psychotic medication but stopped taking it, which the prosecution said led to a further decline in his mental health".

Apparently, Calocane even visited MI5 HQ in London to ask them to stop spying on him. 

One aspect of this case shared with previous killings is that Calocane was held by the mental health authorities on several occasions; he also had a habit of not taking his medication - like so many murderers of this type. He had assaulted two workplace colleagues six weeks before murdering the three victims above but, strangely, had not been arrested. He was alleged to have assaulted a police officer, but had failed to attend court for this charge in September, 2022, nine months before his triple murder. Again, he was not arrested.

Another familiar feature is that Calocane has been found guilty of manslaughter, which outraged the families of the victims. Lee Coates, son of Ian, said: 

"The way this case has gone shows the flaws in the justice system because the evidence is there that it was calculated, pre-meditated and therefore should it be murder. I think it is disgusting. He has to spend the rest of his life behind bars, otherwise we have been let down by this country and the judicial system."

As if the families had not suffered enough, they have now been faced with the fact that some police officers have been disciplined for viewing film footage of the incidents. Sky News reports:

"A special constable has been sacked for viewing body-worn camera footage of two students in their final moments after they had been stabbed in the street after a night out... Almost 180 police staff were found to have viewed material relating to the case, with 11 of them having no "legitimate reason" to do so... the special constable was dealt with at an "accelerated misconduct hearing" chaired by the chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, Kate Meynell, and held in private".

Insult piled upon the injury of grief, in other words. On Tuesday, Barnaby Webber's mother, Emma Webber, described this matter as being "sickening", condemning it as "abhorrent voyeurism and it's inexcusable".

I am, as I have said so many times before, fervently hoping that the perpetrator, in this case Calocane, will never be released. If he is, like so many others of this type, he might well kill again. His sentence is up for review.

Once again, I find myself hoping that this terrible event will lead to a review of how violent mental health patients are being allowed to live in the community. There is no doubt that there are many more potential Valdo Calocanes out there, as I have experienced for myself.

Several months ago, my wife and I were on a bus, heading to a meeting in West London. A dishevelled-looking individual got on, sat alone, and began talking to himself. For no apparent reason, he began cursing the bus driver, eventually leaving his seat and attempting to break through the driver's protective glass in order to attack him. Failing in this, he let himself off the bus, crossed the dual carriageway and threw a traffic cone at the bus. It missed, but lay in the middle of the road, a hazard to traffic. When we reached our destination, I spoke to the driver and offered to provide a witness statement. The driver's reply shocked me. Laughing, he said "No point - things like that happen every day!". 

I am sure that I will be writing about this topic again...