The mother of Valdo Calocane, who killed three people in Nottingham in 2023, has told an inquiry that the mental health system is broken and that until there is a crisis “no one listens to you”. Celeste Calocane gave evidence for the first time at the inquiry into the attacks, which is examining events before and after the incident.
Valdo Calocane, who has paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to a suspended hospital order in January 2024 after killing students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65, on 13 June 2023. He also attempted to kill three others. Calocane was sectioned four times between 2020 and 2023.
Ms Calocane described repeatedly “raising flags” to medical staff but said “no one was acting on it”. The counsel to the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, said notes from May 2020 showed Ms Calocane had warned of her son’s “risk to others in his current mental state” after he attempted to break into a neighbour’s flat. During his first hospital admission, her other son, Elias, compiled a dossier of violent and paranoid messages from Calocane, including one where he said he was “thinking about red rum” – murder spelled backwards. Doctors did not respond, and Calocane was discharged on 13 June 2020 against his mother’s wishes.
One month later, Ms Calocane contacted the crisis team about her concerns. Two days after that, Calocane tried to break into a neighbour’s flat again and was sectioned for a second time. She said: “I [knew] something wasn’t right because of our conversation. So I phoned the services and they just didn’t do anything about it until he was in crisis.” The inquiry was previously told that during this admission a doctor said Calocane could “end up killing someone” and his diagnosis was “likely schizophrenia”. Ms Calocane said she was not informed of this.
She said she had hoped her son would be kept in hospital for at least six months, but he was discharged after two weeks. She also told the inquiry that in August 2020 she warned of Calocane’s “risk to others”. Asked if anyone discussed this risk with her, she said: “Never. I just had to navigate the system myself and try to make sense of what was going on.” She added: “I was doing a mental health job for them, even though I wasn’t trained, I was the one raising the flags … no one was acting on it, until I said something.”
Ms Calocane also said she was denied information from medical professionals because her son had instructed staff not to share details. She was challenged on why she did not leave work on the morning of 13 June 2023, when Elias told her about a call from Calocane in which he said it would be the last time he would hear from him and that something was “already done”. Ms Calocane said she feared her son had attempted suicide, but at that point he had already killed Webber and O’Malley-Kumar. She said: “Looking back, maybe that’s what I should have done, but I didn’t do that because this is something I’ve been living with for the last three years.”
