Emma Webber Says Nottingham Attacks Inquiry Ends After 164 Witnesses
The nottingham attacks public inquiry heard its last day of evidence on Friday after 14 weeks and 164 witnesses. Emma Webber, Barnaby Webber's mother, said the process had left her mentally exhausted and described a new hideous revelation each day.
Emma Webber and the last day
Webber told Breakfast that she was really mentally exhausted after a really hard and intense nearly five months, and that it felt a bit weird that the inquiry was at its last day. She added: “But it's certainly not the end. There's so much that's going to happen on the back of this.”
She said: “But I don't think there's been 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.”
Webber also described a WhatsApp message sent by a Nottinghamshire Police officer during the inquiry as “disgusting and grotesque”. The inquiry examined the lead-up to the attacks and the aftermath, including actions by public bodies and police before, during and after the killings.
Valdo Calocane and the attacks
Valdo Calocane was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020. On 13 June 2023, he stabbed to death Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates in Nottingham, and tried to kill three others.
During the attacks, it took 91 minutes from the first call to Nottinghamshire Police about the attack on Grace and Barnaby until Calocane was found and arrested. By then, 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 “should have been better”.
Ian Coates and the response
The inquiry also heard that a Nottinghamshire Police officer described Barnaby Webber as properly butchered after sending the WhatsApp message about his wounds. The Independent Office for Police Conduct launched multiple investigations into the actions of officers from Nottinghamshire Police and Leicestershire Police.
Ian Coates's body was kept at the crime scene for nearly 15 hours. It was covered in blankets for two hours until a forensic tent became available. Elaine Newton, his long-term partner, said it felt like he had been killed twice because she was told he had died in a car crash before being informed more than four hours later that he had actually been stabbed.
Newton said in a statement on Friday: “After listening to the evidence over the last three months, I have lost all trust in the NHS and the police.” 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”.
The inquiry has now finished hearing evidence, leaving the families with the findings and any follow-up action that comes from the testimony gathered over nearly five months. For the relatives, the next stage is not another hearing but the consequences of what the evidence has already laid out.
