Inquiry Hears 164 Witnesses Over 14 Weeks in Nottingham Attack
The nottingham attack public inquiry heard its last day of evidence on Friday after 14 weeks and 164 witnesses. Barnaby Webber's mother, Emma Webber, said the hearings had brought a "hideous revelation" each day and left her "really mentally exhausted".
Valdo Calocane, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020, stabbed Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates to death on 13 June 2023 and tried to kill three other people in Nottingham. The inquiry has spent nearly five months examining the lead-up to the killings and what followed.
Emma Webber on the hearings
Webber said there was "not a single day of evidence from anyone who was involved in Calocane... where there hasn't been some new hideous revelation, and something that we had never found out before," and she described a Nottinghamshire Police officer's WhatsApp message referencing her son's wounds as "disgusting and grotesque". The inquiry also heard the officer described the teenage victim as "properly butchered".
Her comments came as the inquiry closed evidence on Friday. Webber told Breakfast, "I'm really mentally exhausted because it's been a really hard and intense nearly five months, and it feels a bit weird that we're actually at the last day today." She added: "But it's certainly not the end. There's so much that's going to happen on the back of this."
Search for Calocane
The inquiry heard it took 91 minutes from the first call to Nottinghamshire Police about the attack on Grace and Barnaby at about 04:00 BST until Calocane was found and arrested, by which time he had attacked Ian Coates. Rob Griffin, who was Nottinghamshire Police's assistant chief constable at the time, said the co-ordination of the search for Calocane during the attacks "should have been better".
It also heard that Coates's body was kept at the crime scene for nearly 15 hours and covered in blankets for two hours until a forensic tent became available. Elaine Newton, his long-term partner, said she was told he had died in a car crash before she was informed more than four hours later that he had actually been stabbed.
Elaine Newton and police failures
Newton said hearing the extent of systemic failings during the inquiry had been "horrifying". She said, "it was not just Valdo Calocane who killed Ian" and that the individuals and agencies behind the failings "share that burden of responsibility".
She also said, "After listening to the evidence over the last three months, I have lost all trust in the NHS and the police." The Independent Office for Police Conduct has launched multiple investigations into the actions of officers from Nottinghamshire Police and Leicestershire Police, leaving the families waiting for the next stage in the wider response to the case.
