Father of student stabbed by Valdo Calocane brands police decision ‘disgusting’
Calocane was sentenced to hospital order after killing three people and attempting to murder three others.
The father of a university student who was fatally attacked by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane has told an inquiry that it is “disgusting” that the teenage stabbing victims were tested for drugs and alcohol but their killer was not.
Sanjoy Kumar, Grace O’Malley-Kumar’s father, said he could not understand why Calocane had not been tested for drugs while he was in custody after going on a violent rampage in Nottingham.
Ms O’Malley-Kumar, 19, was stabbed to death with her university friend Barnaby Webber in the early hours of June 13 2023 in Ilkeston Road after going on a night out.
Calocane then killed caretaker Ian Coates, 65, before running over three pedestrians with a stolen van.
Dr Kumar said he had to sign human tissue forms – forms he had never seen himself as a GP and a forensic medical examiner with the Metropolitan Police – otherwise their daughter’s body would not be released to them.
He told the central London inquiry: “You had to sign them, but what was not highlighted was that this is a point in time where you are also signing to say that samples could be taken. That was absolutely not pointed out.
“They took samples from our children to test for drugs and alcohol. I was really struck by that being really quite disgusting.
“Our children were tested, but the culprit wasn’t and from there on in, in terms of previous interactions and mental health, that was not made into a big thing at all, that was a flyaway comment.”
Dr Kumar “just couldn’t understand” that a hair sample was not taken while killer Valdo Calocane was in custody, adding “it may have proved nothing but it may have proved everything”.
The father said that from his experience he knew a hair sample to test for drugs did not require Calocane’s consent.
Retired Nottinghamshire Police Detective Superintendent Leigh Sanders previously apologised to bereaved families during the inquiry for a decision not to take a hair sample to test Calocane for possible drug use.
But the ex-officer said that a sample of hair “would not be able to provide analysis that showed drugs or alcohol in the system at a specific time or date”.
Dr Kumar said: “If you’re a detective of any description at all, and I think every detective watching this is going to agree, if you are here to detect crime, that means forensics is really important.
“And a basic part of that forensics is head hair.”
Dr Kumar said it is “obvious” that if Calocane, who was the subject of a warrant after assaulting a police officer, had been arrested before the attacks, there would have been a different outcome.
He told the inquiry: “The analogy I use with VC (Valdo Calocane) is that VC was like an oil tanker who crashed into our children and Ian. A one-degree change in his course, he could have ended up in a different continent.”
He added: “If he’d missed our children, he would’ve hit someone else’s.”
Dr Kumar said the family went for a meeting with the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) with faith in the organisation but found it “absurd” when a decision-maker in the meeting decided to hold a prayer.
He told the inquiry: “The IOPC have been unprofessional and nothing but a joke. When people say they are not fit for purpose, I believe that.
“We had a meeting and the decision-maker held a prayer in the room when we walked in. It was the most absurd thing I have ever seen in my life.
“We were asking serious questions and the decision-maker said ‘let’s say a prayer’. It was absurd.”
On Wednesday morning, Mr Webber’s parents said they will “never forgive” the police after officers accessed footage from the attacks and sent WhatsApp messages about their son’s injuries.
His mother Emma Webber described one message as “disgusting and grotesque”.
David Webber, the student’s father, said: “And it does seem to me that, again, in this case, my son, who was the victim here, his privacy was not taken into consideration.”
Mr and Mrs Webber described the “unfolding horror” of learning that prosecutors intended to accept Calocane’s plea of guilty to manslaughter.
Mr Webber said: “It’s a bit of a state of shock because you’ve set yourself up for ‘this is what we’re doing: three counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder’.
“Then all of a sudden it’s a complete U-turn.”
Calocane, who admitted manslaughter and attempted murder, is detained indefinitely in a high-security hospital after prosecutors accepted his not guilty pleas to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility in January 2024.
The inquiry continues.
