Attacks families not told ‘stalker’ had violent past

Nottingham victims’ families say police withheld details of a man with violent past who sought them out

Constantvpn.com – Two years after three people were fatally stabbed in a single afternoon in Nottingham, the families of the victims say they were kept in the dark about a man who had been tracking their movements and attempting to make contact — a man whose record included mental-health episodes and prior violent offences. The families allege that Nottinghamshire Police knew of his behaviour as early as December 2024 yet waited roughly a year before sharing even basic information, and that when contact was finally made, no mention was made of his psychiatric history or prior convictions.

The killings took place on 13 June 2023, when Valdo Calocane stabbed Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates to death in a series of attacks across the city. Three additional people were wounded as Calocane attempted to kill them. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020. Now 34, Calocane is serving an indefinite hospital order after pleading guilty to three counts of murder.

A visitor to a London surgery, and a trip to Somerset

Dr Sanjoy Kumar, father of Grace O’Malley-Kumar, told the BBC that in 2025 he was contacted by Nottinghamshire Police and informed that a man from Nottingham — who had shown a fixation on his family and on the Webber family — had turned up at his GP practice in London. According to Kumar, the officers offered almost no identifying detail and made no reference to any prior mental-health episodes or criminal record.

“They [the police officers] said it was a very lowbrow thing. There was no assessment of risk to me or my family,” Kumar said. “They didn’t mention the word ‘risk’.”

Separately, Emma Webber, mother of Barnaby Webber, learned that the same individual had travelled to Somerset, including to the family’s home town, in an apparent attempt to locate them. She said she was not told about the visit for eighteen months.

“Now we learn that another mentally ill man with a fixation on us and the Nottingham case travelled to Somerset, including our home town, seeking out victims’ families; and the police chose not to tell us,” Webber wrote in a social media post, describing herself as “furious.”

What the families learned later

Kumar said it was only through ongoing investigations into the force’s handling of the case that he eventually received fuller details. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which oversees complaints about police conduct, confirmed it had received a referral from Nottinghamshire Police relating to information the force allegedly withheld from the families about a potential witness who had tried to contact them.

Through the IOPC process, Kumar said he discovered the man had been placed on the Prevent register — the government’s counter-terrorism and safeguarding list — had been sectioned under mental-health legislation on multiple occasions, and was known to be a violent offender.

“I’m angry. Don’t place my wife, don’t place my other child at risk. Do these people not realise the tragedy we’ve been through?” Kumar said. “Just be transparent. That’s all we wanted.”

“Absolutely flabbergasted”

Grace’s mother, Dr Sinead O’Malley-Kumar, spoke to BBC Radio 4 about what she described as a pattern of minimal communication from the force. She said police had been aware of the man’s behaviour since December 2024 but did not inform the families until approximately a year later.

“And what’s more concerning is that, as victims, we weren’t given the proper information,” she said. “We do not know what this man looks like. Should he ring on our doorbell? Should he come to our place of work again? The information has been minimal.”

For families already living with the aftermath of losing a child or parent, the prospect of an unidentified individual with a documented history of violence and mental-health episodes appearing at their doorstep or workplace raises practical safety questions that, they argue, the police had a duty to answer promptly and fully.

Police and IOPC responses

A Nottinghamshire Police spokesperson confirmed the force had received a complaint and, given its nature, referred the matter to the IOPC on 24 August. The spokesperson added that the force was awaiting the regulator’s response and could not comment further while an investigation was underway, though it said the complainant had been updated throughout the process.

An IOPC spokesperson said the body was “assessing the referral” to determine what further action was required. The spokesperson explained that after initially receiving information from Nottinghamshire Police, the IOPC had spoken to a potential witness in January 2025 in connection with its own investigation into the force’s interactions with Calocane before the attacks. At that point, it was unclear whether Calocane was the subject of the matters the witness had reported, and the information was assessed as not directly relevant to the IOPC’s inquiries.

“We did, however, make the force aware of the information provided by the witness so it could take the appropriate safeguarding measures,” the spokesperson said. “We recognised that the families should have been updated that we’d spoken to this witness at the time and acknowledged that in a recent update to them.”

Broader context and implications

The complaint sits within a wider scrutiny of how Nottinghamshire Police managed information in the period before and after the June 2023 killings. Families of victims in high-profile cases have repeatedly called for greater transparency about individuals who show obsessive interest in the case or its victims, particularly where those individuals carry mental-health histories or prior convictions. The Prevent register, maintained under the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, records individuals assessed as at risk of being drawn into terrorism-related activity; inclusion does not equate to a criminal conviction, but it does signal that authorities had flagged the person for monitoring.

Sectioning under the Mental Health Act allows a person to be detained for assessment or treatment, and repeated sectioning can indicate a pattern of episodes requiring intervention. Combined with a record of violent offending, such a history would ordinarily prompt a risk assessment before the individual is allowed near known victims’ families — a step the Kumar family says never took place.

For the Webber and Kumar families, the episode underscores a frustration that extends beyond the original tragedy: the sense that institutions tasked with protecting them treated their safety as an afterthought, and that transparency — the simplest possible remedy — was withheld for months without explanation. As the IOPC continues its assessment, the families’ message remains unchanged: tell them who came looking, what that person’s record shows, and what safeguards are in place. Nothing more, nothing less.