The families of the victims of the Nottingham attacks have vowed to take their fight for accountability “to the next level” on the one-year anniversary of the killings. In a joint statement, the families of Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates, who were killed by Valdo Calocane in the early hours of 13 June last year, said they had instructed a legal team to help them “leave no stone unturned on our quest for answers”.
And so they should - who wouldn't wish them every success?
Calocane was given a hospital order after pleading guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility owing to paranoid schizophrenia, as well as three counts of attempted murder. In May, the court of appeal rejected an application to increase his sentence to include jail time, with the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, saying “schizophrenia was the sole identified cause of these crimes”.
Solely identified as such by those who wanted to hide the fact they were accomplices.
The families said the outcome “was disappointing but not unexpected”, and blamed it on an “utterly flawed and under-resourced criminal justice system”.They said it was “because of a weak investigation and prosecution, over-reliance upon doctors’ evidence and archaic out-of-date laws that Calocane receives no punishment for his heinous acts. “We recognise his previous diagnosis of mental illness, however, maintain that he knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong, but he did it anyway. And therefore, he is a murderer,” they said.
Indeed he is. And if they don't win this, he won't be the only one let out to kill again...
