Mother of Nottingham triple killer says neglect of mental health care is 'destroying lives'

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Why does that does this happen?

[00:00:02]That's the question.

[00:00:03]Why?

[00:00:05]And if we can go on in this country doing inquiry after inquiry after inquiry until we call it what it is. It's a systemic [music] problem that needs to be solved. And you can be a brilliant nurse, a brilliant psychiatric nurse or doctor, but if you haven't got resources, you're set up to fail.

[00:00:25]You're set up to fail.

[00:00:28]>> On the 13th of June 2023, Valdo Calocane killed three people and injured three others in Nottingham.

[00:00:41]The lives he took were those [music] of students, Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and caretaker Ian Coates.

[00:00:49]Months before the attacks, Valdo Calocane, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was discharged from mental health services >> [music] >> run by Nottinghamshire Health Care Foundation Trust.

[00:01:02]However, >> [music] >> the serious decline of his mental health started in May 2020 when his mother, Celeste Calocane, [music] received a call to tell her her son had been suffering from a psychotic episode and had forced his way into a neighbor's flat.

[00:01:17]That incident was the start of years of anxiety for Ms. Calocane waiting for the phone to ring again for the next [music] crisis to happen.

[00:01:26]Then the worst did happen.

[00:01:30]>> I therefore make an order under all six counts of the indictment that you will be readmitted to and detained at Ashworth high-security hospital.

[00:01:38]>> There is so much more to say [music] and clearly serious questions regarding this case and events leading up to this monster being out in society, but for today our [music] darling son, his dear friend Grace, and a wonderfully kind grandfather Ian have been stolen from us forever and let down by the very system that should have been protecting them.

[00:02:00]>> We will never come to terms with the loss of our beloved daughter Grace and how she lost her life.

[00:02:09]Her heroic actions she was a gift to us and she was a gift to the country.

[00:02:14]>> Our family has suffered a great loss.

[00:02:16]The children whom my father had a positive impression on has suffered a great loss. The city of Nottingham has suffered a great loss. The NHS mental health trust have to be held accountable for their failures along with the police.

[00:02:28]>> Three years on, a public inquiry into the tragedy [music] has begun and with me today Abeda Calebin's family ready to speak about how the system failed to prevent that devastating day.

[00:02:40]>> Six years.

[00:02:41]>> He hasn't stop.

[00:02:43]Yeah, it's going to be non-stop since then.

[00:02:45]>> Until there's a crisis, you don't have a response.

[00:02:48]That's how I felt with the with the system.

[00:02:51]>> No crisis is a good crisis, right? So, if you're waiting for crisis, you're going to get a bad crisis or a worse crisis. So, every time you're flipping the coin, is it going to be a monumental tragedy or is it going to be something that's relatively less bad but still bad, right?

[00:03:05]>> What was that like waiting, constantly having to wait for the crisis, expecting the unmanageable might happen with Abeda?

[00:03:15]>> So, you it does feel hopeless when you're in it because you provide the information, you provide concerns and often they'll like they'll tell you, "Well, it's it's okay, you know, it's you know, it's fine, you know, you know, they'll say Abeda's okay or we've seen him, we've spoken to him, we think he's okay."

[00:03:34]Even if we're sure that it's not the case or sometimes we're not sure that it's not the case and we you know, you trust sometimes, you trust that what people are telling you, trust the professionals. But, the issue is that it's because there isn't an incident to to act upon and then yeah, you end up with cases like this and it's not just homicide. There there were there were a thousand many more cases of suicide which also have exactly the same hallmarks because yeah, it's it's it's the same thing. It all works within the same system. It's just that the tragedy is different, right? In instead of someone hurting someone else, they hurt themselves. And it's, you know, orders of magnitude more suicides than than than homicides.

[00:04:14]>> What do you feel that is? What do you feel the deep-rooted failures are here and where Valdo's case?

[00:04:21]>> There doesn't seem to be enough resources and there aren't enough experienced staff.

[00:04:27]Um and they're all being severely overworked and and the resources aren't probably underpaid in some ways.

[00:04:34]There there's no way something like that can function properly. Even even the best-functioning system, you will find mistakes, but when you so severely reduce the resources, that there is there is a consequence. And in this case, it's treatment.

[00:04:49]>> Where do you feel the bigger failings lie here? Is it in the systemic failings that are keeping clinicians under pressure?

[00:04:58]Is it with individual clinicians? Where do you see these failings?

[00:05:02]>> You can be a brilliant nurse, a brilliant psychiatric nurse or doctor, but if you haven't got resources, you set up to fail.

[00:05:11]You set up to fail.

[00:05:13]>> You know, you you you can't treat someone properly well or effectively, um someone with a a mental disorder without knowing them properly, without being able to pick up on I guess the more subtle um symptoms they may display. If if you know someone properly, you're you'll be much better geared to doing that.

[00:05:32]>> And it's just like a cycle, just like kind of we manage your crisis, it's stable now. We need a bed. So, somebody else he needs to be discharged, and then we go back again.

[00:05:44]I will be maybe telling them for some period of time, oh, he's not well. It's not well. They reassure me, "It's fine.

[00:05:48]It's fine." because there's no imminent crisis until the crisis happen, then he goes to the hospital, then it's the same cycle again. Why does does this happen?

[00:05:59]That's the question.

[00:06:00]Why?

[00:06:02]And then we can go on in this country doing inquiry after inquiry after inquiry until we call it what it is.

[00:06:11]It's a systemic problem that need to be solved. This is beyond a personal failure. Because if if it is like uh an individual failure, it will just happen in one trust, then it won't happen in other. But if you happen in here, you happen across the across the country.

[00:06:25]>> When you when you hear reports and considering we've had inquiry after inquiry we know what the failings are, we know what the needs are but you hear reports such as the government isn't protecting mental health funding. The proportion of mental health funding is reducing.

[00:06:43]How does that make you feel considering the tragedy?

[00:06:46]>> We we were in the situation yeah for the third year running the the government this has decided that that the proportion of the NHS funding the NHS budget that's going to be spent on mental health services is going to decrease for the third year running.

[00:07:01]>> Like of in Valdo's case, it didn't just affect Valdo's life. It didn't just affect our life as a family. It affected other family.

[00:07:08]So the priority on that sector needs to be checked.

[00:07:11]>> Uh and also I I think part of the issue is that people don't know about how these things come about.

[00:07:18]They're They only see it in cases like this where there's huge media coverage.

[00:07:22]So I don't I'm not sure people are being helped to understand um what gets us to this point and and so that we can better understand how to get out of this point.

[00:07:33]>> Who was Valdo before he got ill? What was the boy and the man like before his illness?

[00:07:41]>> You just need to um be able to know him, the man behind the the the illness.

[00:07:51]You know?

[00:07:52]That's who he's always Waldo.

[00:07:55]As a as a I tell people, I've raised three wonderful kids.

[00:08:00]They've been raised in such a good way, with moral, with a character, with uh kindness, with respect, and then all the difference.

[00:08:10]One is a paranoid schizophrenic.

[00:08:13]For all the people out there that's maybe going through a paranoid schizophrenic, they don't they don't need to be scared. If they need help, they should ask for it. They should speak to the people because the way this case been portrayed in the last 3 years, I feel my heart goes heavy for anyone that got paranoid schizophrenia out there.

[00:08:33]They're not monsters.

[00:08:35]They're not evil. They're human beings with a severe mental health condition.

[00:08:40]They just need somebody to understand what they need, what the therapeutic uh treatment need is to help them. That's who they are.

[00:08:51]But they're still the person they are.

[00:08:54]With the just a an illness they have to they don't understand themselves, and then the society doesn't understand. The society can't see it.

[00:09:03]You know?

[00:09:05]That's what it