Valdo Calocane’s mother tells London inquiry that broken mental health system failed her son
The mother of triple murderer Valdo Calocane says she felt she was “left alone” and doing mental health services work before her son went on a stabbing rampage.
Celeste Calocane told an inquest her son, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was “empty” for months before killing Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, in Ilkeston Road, Nottingham, in the early hours of June 13, 2023.
He then killed 65-year-old Ian Coates in the Mapperley Park area about an hour later, stealing his grandfather’s van and using it to run over pedestrians at two locations in Nottingham city centre.
On Thursday, Ms Calocane told the inquest examining the events leading up to the killings that she did not think relatives should be “left alone” trying to access mental health services.
He said: “No brother or mother should be left alone in this situation trying to navigate ministry.
“This system is very broken and only creates broken people.
“Nobody needs to go to bed thinking, ‘I’m going to make a phone call tomorrow, something happened to my loved one,’ because you don’t understand what happened.”
He added: “Nobody listened to you until the crisis occurred. Once you have a crisis, it’s too late. We need prevention.”
The inquest heard Ms Calocane contacted mental health services about her son but did not believe they acted on her concerns.
Inquiry barrister Rachel Langdale KC asked Ms Calocane whether she had been “given” the duty of monitoring her son’s mental health after he was discharged from hospital for the second time in 2020.
He replied. “Even though I wasn’t trained, I was doing mental health work for them. I was the one raising the flags and saying this was happening.”
“He was being rude, he was disorganized; no one would take action until I said something. Even when I say something, it takes maybe weeks or months for them to do something about it.”
The inquest previously heard Calocane called his brother Elias after carrying out the fatal stabbings and told him it would be the last time he would speak to him.
The inquest heard that when Elias Calocane asked his brother if he was going to do something stupid, his brother replied “it’s already been done”.
Asked what this meant after Elias texted her details of the call, Ms Calocane said: “I thought he must have taken something to end his life… that’s what I assumed from that.”
Tim Moloney KC, representing the bereaved families, asked Ms Calocane why she did not immediately call Elias Calocane when she thought he might have taken the life of her other son.
He replied: “Looking back, maybe that’s what I should have done, but I didn’t do it at the time because it’s something I’ve been going through for the last three years.”
Ms Calocane told the inquest she last saw her son in November 2022.
He said: “When I looked at him… emptiness. It wasn’t the same person.”
“It wasn’t the Valdo I knew, the one I raised in my home. It was empty. There was nothing there.”
Calocane did not travel to his family’s home in Wales for Christmas 2022, but sent relatives a zip file including his research into mind control technology.
“He was trying to convince me… that the government, everyone, the mental health service, the police were after him, that there was this conspiracy.
“Trying to understand this file was beyond my understanding because it was the same thing he had been telling me for the last two years,” Ms. Calocane said.
The investigation continues.
