The mother of triple killer Valdo Calocane has told an inquiry she felt she was doing the job of mental health services in a system that is “broken” and does not act until there is a crisis.
Celeste Calocane said the last time she saw her son – who has paranoid schizophrenia – months before he stabbed three people in a violent rampage he was “empty” and not the son she knew.
University of Nottingham graduate Calocane fatally stabbed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, in Ilkeston Road, Nottingham, in the early hours of June 13 2023.
He went on to kill grandfather Ian Coates, 65, in the Mapperley Park area around an hour later, stealing his van and using it to run over pedestrians at two locations in Nottingham city centre.
On Thursday, Mrs Calocane told the central London inquiry, which is looking at events leading up to the killings, that she does not think relatives should be “left alone” in trying to navigate mental health services.
She said: “No brother or mother should have to be left alone in that situation to try to navigate the service.
“This system is so broken and it’s just building broken people.
“No-one should have to go to bed thinking ‘I’m going to have a phone call tomorrow – something happened to my loved one’ because you don’t understand what is going on.”
She added: “Until there was a crisis, no-one listened to you. When you get a crisis it’s too late. Prevention, that’s what we need.”
The inquiry heard that Mrs Calocane contacted mental health services about her son but did not think they acted on her concerns.
Mrs Calocane was asked by counsel to the inquiry Rachel Langdale KC if the task of monitoring her son’s mental health was “handed over” to her after he was discharged from hospital for the second time in 2020.
She replied. “I was doing a mental health job for them, even though I wasn’t trained. I was the one that was raising the flags and saying this was happening.
“He’s being abrupt, he was unkempt – no-one was acting on it until I say something. Even when I say something, it takes maybe weeks or months before they do something about it.”
The inquiry heard that after carrying out fatal stabbings in the early hours of June 13, Calocane called his brother Elias and said it was the last time he would speak to him.
Elias Calocane asked his brother if he was going to do something stupid and he responded that “it is already done”, the inquiry heard.
Asked what she thought this meant after being texted details of the call by Elias, Mrs 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 Mrs Calocane why she did not call Elias Calocane immediately when she thought her other son might have taken his life.
She replied: “Looking back, maybe that’s what I should have done, but I didn’t do that at the time because this is something I’ve been living with for the last three years.”
Mrs Calocane told the inquiry the last time she saw her son was in November 2022.
She said: “When I look at him … emptiness. It wasn’t the same person.
“It wasn’t the Valdo that I knew, that I raised in my house. It was empty. There was nothing there.”
At Christmas in 2022, Calocane did not go to his family home in Wales but sent a zip file of documents to his relatives including his research into mind control technology.
“It was … him trying to convince me the Government, everyone, was after him, the mental health service, the police – this conspiracy.
“It was beyond my understanding to try to understand that file because it was exactly what he’s been telling me the last two years”, Mrs Calocane said.
The inquiry continues.
