THE UK GOVERNMENT has ordered that review is to take place into the mental health services that treated Valdo Calocane, the man who killed Grace O’Malley Kumar (19) who was from an Irish family.
The Department of Health has announced that a special review will take place into the Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust, where Calocane was treated for paranoid schizophrenia.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said that the review will provide “further answers” for the families of students Grace and Barnaby Webber (also 19), and school caretaker Ian Coates (65), who were killed on the streets of Nottingham in June 2023.
A judge handed down a hospital order at Calocane’s sentencing for manslaughter by diminished responsibility earlier this week, after it heard of his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis.
The families have questioned the care that Calocane received before the killings on 13 June last year.
Grace’s mother Sinead, who is originally from Ireland, spoke in court of her daughter’s “bravery” in comparison to Calocane’s “cowardice”.
Friends Grace and Barnaby were out walking together on the night of 13 June, when Calocane attacked Barnaby.
Grace attempted to intervene and defend her friend. She suffered stab wounds to her chest and abdomen and defensive stab wounds to her hands and arms.
Her mother said that Grace was someone who “always stood up for her friends”.
Grace’s father Dr Sanjoy Kumar has spoken about the “gaps” in the mental health treatment Calocane had previously received.
At the time of the attacks, the attacker was wanted for the assault of an officer.
A police officer who appeared before the court in Calocane’s trial said that an arrest under that warrant may have resulted in a further referral to mental health services, but he added that the attacker had not engaged with mental health services successfully in the past.
The Nottinghamshire Healthcare Chief Executive Ifti Majid said that the service is robustly reviewing its interactions with Calocane who was a former patient.
He said that Calocane was a patient under the service’s care between May 2020 and September 2022 with episodes of care “both as an inpatient”and in the community “as an outpatient”.
He added that there are many people who live with severe mental health issues “who do not offend and are supported to live well in their community”".
The court also heard that Calocane had been taken to mental health facilities multiple times by police in the past due to “bizarre” behaviour.
At one point between his diagnosis and the attack, the court heard, Calocane had visited MI5′s London headquarters and demanded they stop “controlling him”.
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