The mother of triple killer Valdo Calocane has told an inquiry that she felt “left alone” and was effectively doing the job of mental health services before her son carried out a stabbing rampage in Nottingham.
Mother’s testimony at inquiry
Celeste Calocane stated that her son, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, appeared “empty” in the months before he killed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, on Ilkeston Road in Nottingham during the early hours of 13 June 2023. Approximately one hour later, he fatally stabbed 65-year-old Ian Coates in the Mapperley Park area, then stole the grandfather’s van and used it to strike pedestrians at two locations in Nottingham city centre.
On Thursday, Ms Calocane addressed the inquiry, which is examining the events leading up to the killings, emphasising that relatives should not be forced to navigate mental health services on their own. She said: “No brother or mother should have to be left alone in that situation to try to navigate the service. This system is so broken and it’s just building broken people. No-one should have to go to bed thinking ‘I’m going to have a phone call tomorrow – something happened to my loved one’ because you don’t understand what is going on.”
She added: “Until there was a crisis, no-one listened to you. When you get a crisis it’s too late. Prevention, that’s what we need.”
Concerns ignored
The inquiry heard that Ms Calocane had contacted mental health services about her son but believed that her concerns were not acted upon. When asked by counsel to the inquiry Rachel Langdale KC whether the task of monitoring her son’s mental health was “handed over” to her after his second hospital discharge in 2020, Ms Calocane replied: “I was doing a mental health job for them, even though I wasn’t trained. I was the one that was raising the flags and saying this was happening. He’s being abrupt, he was unkempt – no-one was acting on it until I say something. Even when I say something, it takes maybe weeks or months before they do something about it.”
Final contact
The inquiry previously heard that after the fatal stabbings, Calocane called his brother Elias and said it was the last time he would speak to him. Elias asked if he was going to do something stupid, and Calocane responded that “it is already done”. Ms Calocane, upon being texted details of the call by Elias, said: “I thought he must have taken something to end his life … that’s what I assumed from that.”
Tim Moloney KC, representing the bereaved families, asked why she did not call Elias immediately when she thought her son might have taken his life. She replied: “Looking back, maybe that’s what I should have done, but I didn’t do that at the time because this is something I’ve been living with for the last three years.”
Ms Calocane told the inquiry that the last time she saw her son was in November 2022. She said: “When I look at him … emptiness. It wasn’t the same person. It wasn’t the Valdo that I knew, that I raised in my house. It was empty. There was nothing there.”
At Christmas 2022, Calocane did not visit the family home in Wales but instead sent a zip file of documents to relatives, including his research into mind control technology. Ms Calocane described it as “him trying to convince me the Government, everyone, was after him, the mental health service, the police – this conspiracy. It was beyond my understanding to try to understand that file because it was exactly what he’s been telling me the last two years.”
The inquiry continues.
