Valdo Calocane inquiry: Partner of murdered caretaker told he ‘died in car crash’

The partner of a school guard stabbed to death by paranoid schizophrenic patient Valdo Calocane said he felt like his partner had been killed twice because he was first told he died in a car crash.

Elaine Newton’s long-term partner Ian Coates, 65, was stabbed to death an hour after 19-year-old undergraduates Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were killed in the early hours of June 13, 2023.

He told the public inquiry into the Nottingham attacks that he was first told by police that Mr Coates had died in a road traffic accident (RTA).

Ms Newton told the hearing, which she was initially denied, that it may have been Mr Coates who believed she was at work and that it took more than four hours for her to be told the truth about how her partner actually died.

He said: “They said he was in an RTA, had a car accident. I said, ‘That’ll do, it’s not Ian.’ They said, ‘No, it’s an RTA.’ And I said, ‘Did he hit anyone? What happened?’ I said.

“They said, ‘We can’t tell you.’ And I said, ‘Is there anyone else injured?’ I said. They said, ‘We can’t tell you.’ “That’s all they’ve said to me for about five hours.”

Ms Newton said that after Mr Coates was told he was dead, two young police officers, a man and a woman, spent the morning with him but neither could give any further information about what had happened to him.

She said the female officer kept going outside to speak to someone, adding: “She kept saying there’s no information, there’s no information. She couldn’t tell me anything for all those hours.”

He told the inquest that police liaison officers then asked him to tell them what he knew about what had happened.

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

“And they said, with a shocked look on their face, ‘You got wrong information, you were told wrong information. Ian was murdered and stabbed.’ That’s how I found out.”

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

“I accepted the first piece of information but not the second. You don’t know which one is true or whether they’ve got the wrong person. It wasn’t true, it was a complete mess.”

Ms Newton told Nottinghamshire Police that she did not want to see the face of Calocane, who was referred to as VC during the investigation, but was later shown videos of him wandering around the city on the morning of the attacks.

She said: “I didn’t want to see VC’s face, I didn’t want him to take over my life as much as he did. I wanted to keep his face out of my mind.”

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

“I was not given any information about his past… This was my first hearing, I had no information about it.”

At a meeting with now-retired Nottinghamshire Chief Constable Kate Meynell, Ms Newton said she was not told about Calocane’s past dealings with the police, but instead was told about a WhatsApp group in which officers discussed the deadly attacks.

Asked what she would do if she knew this information, Ms Newton said: “I wouldn’t thank Kate Meynell for all the information she gave me and for allowing me to visit her. I have lost faith in the police and feel I was not given this information and was literally lied to.”

“I should have been informed about his past sooner rather than later. When I went, he could have given me more information instead of just talking about the WhatsApp group.”

Following the attacks, Ms Newton asked Nottinghamshire Police how Calocane was allowed to “wander” around the city and given “excuses” so long after carrying out the fatal stabbings.

He said: “I put this question to Kate Meynell and (my family liaison officer) and they said there could be a number of reasons for this, there were not enough police that morning, Nottingham is a big place.

“These were the excuses I came up with. I said it was early in the morning and there wouldn’t be many people around. They said there might not be enough police officers that morning.”

Ms Newton told the inquest she was “delighted with how everything turned out” but added that “the police should have been more helpful”.

She said the prosecution of Calocane was not explained clearly enough, adding: “I mean meeting or you’re introduced to people, you never, you don’t actually understand because its rushed, it’s not explained enough, they think you understand because it’s their job.

“You don’t understand…the way they talk about criminal justice.”

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 of the foundation.

“I want you to understand that I am not interested in apologizing because it is too late, too little,” he read from an email he sent to the inquiry.

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

“I have zero confidence in any future changes the NHS will make. It hasn’t learned its lessons and doesn’t care about people, it’s just stats and figures,” he wrote.

“I think you see Ian Coates as another statistic that you just throw away and file away.

“What I want is for the people responsible for the catastrophic failures in the NHS to be held to account.”

She added: “I want those who cannot manage VC’s care to be prevented from ever holding a caring position again.”

Ms Newton told the inquest: “I think the police have failed the public, myself and all the other families.”

When asked why, he said: “They didn’t contact the NHS because they weren’t doing their job properly, the NHS didn’t contact the police.

“So I think they all caused this.”