The mother of a student murdered in the Nottingham attacks has warned that “many Valdo Calocanes are among us” and that without urgent action, a similar tragedy will happen again.
Emma Webber, whose 19-year-old son Barnaby was stabbed to death by Calocane on 13 June 2023, spoke at a press conference in London on Monday after a 14-week public inquiry into the attacks concluded on Friday. The inquiry heard from 164 witnesses and laid bare failings by the NHS, police and other agencies.
“Emma Webber says 'catastrophic collapse of responsibility' led to Nottingham attacks; families demand urgent government action.”
“Every single agency failed. Every single one, without exception,” she said. “It has been brutal, bruising and harrowing beyond measure – but it was so very necessary.”
Webber described a “catastrophic collapse of responsibility” and an “undoubted miscarriage of justice”. She said the “fear of stigma and bias was placed above safety and duty”, and accused authorities of “cover-up over candour”.
Calocane, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020, killed Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates before stealing Coates’s van and trying to murder three others – Wayne Birkett, Sharon Miller and Marcin Gawronski. He is now serving an indefinite hospital order after pleading guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
James Coates, Ian’s son, said he and the other families had believed “institutions did everything they could” but were “delusional in our belief that justice would be served”. He added: “For two and a half years, we’ve watched organisations close ranks, mark their own homework, and the inquiry must be the true reckoning.”
The families are calling on the government to meet them within the next month and for “urgent re-examination”. The inquiry chair, retired senior judge Deborah Taylor KC, is expected to release a report with recommendations next spring, but Emma Webber insisted action could not wait: “Excuses stop here and accountability starts today.”
She also urged people not to use her son’s death to “incite any more hate and any more rioting”, after protests in Southampton following the death of Henry Nowak, a case she said had “absolutely” parallels to the Nottingham rampage.