Son of caretaker killed by Calocane found out father died through Instagram

The son of a school caretaker who was stabbed to death by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane has told an inquiry he found out his father had died through an Instagram message from a family friend.

James Coates, whose father Ian Coates, 65, was stabbed just over an hour after 19-year-old undergraduates Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were killed in the early hours of June 13 2023, told the public inquiry into the Nottingham attacks in London that he thought the message was a hoax when he first read it.

James said he had been aware of a police incident in the city which had cordoned off roads as colleagues were struggling to get to work, and later that someone had been killed on Magdala Road, which was close to where he lived, but had no idea it was his father.

“It wasn’t until 3pm that I was walking up the road to my house that I decided to check Instagram. I’d not got notifications on, but I got a message from (a family friend) saying ‘I cant believe what’s happened to your dad, please ring me’.

“And my first instinct is it’s a hoax message and it’s been hacked and trying to get me to ring this number and then I asked her is this a joke and she messaged again reiterating that I should call her.

“She was in hysterics, she said my dad had been involved in an RTA but she had seen what was going off in Nottingham. I still didn’t believe it.”

James told the inquiry they only received a call from Nottinghamshire Police 10 minutes before former chief constable Kate Meynell did a press conference to let Nottingham residents know what had happened, by which point they had tried calling a helpline they saw on the television, non-emergency number 101 and even 999 to try to get information about what had happened to their father.

“By then, we’d pieced almost everything together ourselves from social media and the news so then it was just a case of them apologising that we had to do that,” he said.

James’s brother Lee Coates told the inquiry he found Ms Meynell’s claims on TV that officers were “doing everything for the bereaved families” rude and disingenuous.

He said: “She’d personally not made any contact with us. We’d had to fight to find out information about our dad.”

James told the inquiry: “Police logs showed my number was available to police at 12 minutes to eight in the morning and we didn’t get a call back until around 5pm, (which) is disgusting for me.”

The brothers said they felt “abandoned and overwhelmed”, that they were not fully informed about what had happened to their father and that they were an “afterthought” when vigils were arranged in the city.

Speaking of the moment he saw Calocane for the first time in court, James told the hearing: “It struck me how large he was… my dad was six months from retirement, he was quite skinny, he lived off coffee and cigarettes.

“Seeing his build, I knew there was never going to be any chance of them protecting themselves against him.”

It was at Calocane’s sentencing hearing that they learned the “full extent” of their father’s injuries.

Lee said he was “absolutely distraught” when he heard in November 2023 that he should expect Calocane to plead not guilty to murdering his father.

“I promised (Ian’s partner Elaine Newton) that this guy will go away for the rest of her life,” he told the inquiry.

“So when we got this information that he’s potentially not going to go away for the crimes that he’s committed, where they’re telling you that he’s unsafe to go into a normal prison…

“Of course, he is, he’s a monster, you know, look at what he’s done. This is why we have prisons, no? So we can put people like this away.”

Mr Coates’ sons gave evidence to the inquiry in Nottingham on Tuesday after their father’s long-term partner Ms Newton told the hearing it felt like her partner had been killed twice because she was first told he had died in a car crash.

Ms Newton said she was first told by police that Mr Coates had died in a road traffic accident (RTA) and did not find out he had actually been stabbed to death until more than four hours later.

She told the inquiry that police liaison officers later asked her to tell them what she knew about what had happened.

“And I said ‘Yes, Ian was in an RTA but I don’t know any more than that’,” Ms Newton said.

“And they looked shocked on their faces and said ‘You’ve got the wrong information, You’ve been told the wrong information. Ian’s been killed and he’s been stabbed’. That’s how I learned.”

Asked how it felt to be told how he had really died, Ms Newton said: “It felt like he’d been killed twice. It wasn’t right.

“The first information, I accepted, but the second I couldn’t accept. You don’t know which one was true, or have they got the wrong person. It was not right, it was a mess.”

Ms Newton also said she only became aware of previous incidents involving Calocane and the police during the inquiry process.

She said: “I was never told any information about his past… The first time was this hearing, I didn’t know anything about any of this at all.”

In the wake of the attacks, Ms Newton asked Nottinghamshire Police how Calocane was allowed to be “roaming” the city so long after he had carried out the fatal stabbings and was given “excuses”.

She said: “I did ask that question to Kate Meynell and (my family liaison officer) and they said it could be quite a few reasons, there was not enough police that morning, Nottingham is a big place.

“Those were the excuses I got. I did say it was early in the morning and there wouldn’t have been a lot of people around. They said they might just not have had enough police officers in that morning.”

Calocane was discharged by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) in September 2022.

Ms Newton read an email she sent to NHFT following meetings with representatives from the trust.

She read her email to the inquiry, which said: “I want you to understand that I am not interested in apologies because it is too late, too little.”

In the email, she said she holds the NHS responsible for the deaths of Mr Coates, Mr Webber and Ms O’Malley-Kumar.

“I have zero confidence in any changes that NHS makes in the future. It does not learn its lessons and does not care about people, only statistics and numbers,” she wrote.

“I believe that is how you see Ian Coates, as just another statistic that you brush aside and file away.

“What I want is the individuals responsible for the catastrophic NHS failings to be held to account.”

She added: “I want those who failed to manage VC’s care to be struck off from ever being in a position of care ever again.”

Ms Newton told the inquiry: “I think the police have let the public and myself and all other families down.”

Asked why, she said: “Because they didn’t do their job properly, they didn’t communicate with the NHS, the NHS didn’t communicate with the police.

“So I think between them all they’ve caused this.”

In a statement he read to the hearing, James said that new information he had found out since the inquiry had started had “astounded” him.

He said: “Over the last two-and-a-half years, I thought I’d heard it all, from missed opportunities, misconduct, clinical mistakes and institutional laziness but unfortunately, more revelations are coming out each week.”

He said: “My innocent father isn’t here to see justice and it’s a hard pill to swallow knowing his attacker won’t spend any time behind bars.

“I feel sorry for the people of Nottingham who put their trust into the police, the NHS… who have continued to fail them.”

Meanwhile, Lee told the inquiry he has had to come to terms with the fact that the deaths of his father, Ms O’Malley-Kumar and Mr Webber were preventable.

“What I have heard at the inquiry so far has left me with many questions,” he said.

“It has taken a further toll on my mental health and I’ve been shocked and dissatisfied with the responses the witnesses have provided and the stances they have fiercely maintained.”

He said: “The people of Nottingham deserve far more than the agencies we have heard from so far. I have not been reassured by much of the evidence I have heard.”

His statement concluded: “I stand here today to fight for my dad. His life mattered. He deserved better than what happened to him and I will not stop saying that until it is acknowledged, not just in words but in meaningful change.”