A woman who broke her back falling from a window trying to flee Nottingham attacker Valdo Calocane was warned by police he could have killed her, an inquiry heard.
Three years before going on his killing spree in 2023, Calocane tried to get into the woman’s flat while she was showering – forcing her to escape by leaping from the first-floor of her student accommodation.
When police detained him, Calocane was taken to a mental health unit rather than charged with an offence by police, chair of the hearing Deborah Taylor was told.
The woman said she was told by police Calocane could not be prosecuted because of his mental health problems and was instead taken to hospital.
Calocane had also been arrested earlier in the day on suspicion of causing criminal damage to a different door in the same block of flats, but the incident was not given “the attention it deserved” by officers, the public inquiry heard on Thursday.
Police body-worn camera footage of the first arrest could not be found, an officer told the hearing.
Calocane killed University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, as well as 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates, and attempted to kill three more people in the June 2023 attacks.
He admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility and attempted murder and was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in January 2024.
The inquiry heard more than three years before the attacks, on 24 May 2020, the young woman believed there was a group of thieves trying to break in when the triple-killer shook her door.
The woman, who was left needing surgery after suffering a fractured spine, was visited by an officer after she was discharged from hospital who told her she had been “brave” when she escaped and told Calocane could have killed her or been violent if he got to her, the inquiry was told.
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‘I was very scared’
The woman said she heard “someone knocking repeatedly on the door”, which “became louder and louder with kicks” and when she asked who was there, Calocane replied, “it’s me, open, open”.
“I could see that the door was shaking, I could feel it coming off,” she said. “I thought as a matter of fact it was a group of thieves or someone who wanted to hurt me.”
She said she initially leant out of the first-floor window, which was around 10 to 12ft from the ground and was shouting for help, but no one was around because of the COVID lockdown.
“I tried to jump but I slipped and I fell on to the ground. I was scared, I was very scared,” she said.
“I was shaking. I could not hold on to the window very well at all. I thought that someone wanted to hurt me, I did not know what to do. I was by myself.”
She told the inquiry Calocane then tried to come towards her after she fell, but police “pinned him down”.
Woman left in ‘constant’ pain
The inquiry heard the woman, who had never seen Calocane before, had to undergo surgery on her spine and has been left in “constant” pain.
Describing what the officer told her after her injury, she said: “He also told me I had been brave, if I had not jumped out of the window many things could have happened to me.
“He could have killed me or could have been violent.”
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Calocane ‘could not be prosecuted’
She added: “They [the police] said they tried doing anything they could but because of his mental health problems, they mentioned schizophrenia, this person could not be jailed and he was therefore taken to a mental health hospital.
“I was very upset and angry. I thought this was not enough, the psychiatric hospital was not enough, but because there were no other possibilities I accepted it.”
The woman said: “I thought ‘what would happen to the person who tried to attack me – how would this end?'”
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Calocane had been released from custody earlier that evening after damaging another door when mental health professionals “considered” research about the disproportionate detention of young black men when deciding to release him into the community.
The inquiry heard after his first arrest that day, Calocane was talking about seeing “devils and demons” before he was released back to the same accommodation.
Former judge Ms Taylor will hear evidence until June this year, then write a report and give recommendations in 2027.
