The families of the Nottingham victims have said the attacker “got away with murder” after an independent review found failings involved in his prior NHS care.
An independent review found Valdo Calocane was allowed to avoid taking long-lasting antipsychotic medication because he did not like needles.
He also punched a police officer in the face and held his flatmates “hostage”.
Calocane, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after killing 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates, before attempting to kill three other people in June 2023.
Prosecutors accepted a plea of manslaughter after experts agreed his schizophrenia meant he wasn’t fully responsible for his actions.
‘Make this trauma stop’
Emma Webber, mother of Barnaby, said on Wednesday at a press conference held by the families, that evidence of failures in dealing with her son’s killer would have been “brushed under the carpet” had it not been for campaigning by the victims’ families and that Calcone “got away with murder”.
“None of us should be here today. Anything and everything that could go wrong did,” she said. “Barnaby, Ian and Grace would be here today if those concerned across these agencies had just done their job properly.”
Mrs Webber said the indefinite hospital order handed to Calocane represented an “enormous miscarriage of justice”.
“He knew what he was doing,” she said. “He serves no punishment for his crimes.”
She added it was “unfathomable” that the families have had to fight for lessons to be learned: “To the prime minister, and the rest of the government, make this trauma stop and make our fight stop.
“You have confirmed there will be a public inquiry, but agree the terms that we’ve been pleading for, make it statutory so all of the agencies, organisations, institutions and, vitally, individuals must… and will be compelled to attend, give evidence and tell the truth.”
The father of Grace, Dr Sanjoy Kumar, said he will be asking the health secretary to order a mental health trust to hold individual doctors responsible for the failures in his daughter’s killer’s care.
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