Appeal court rules against jail time for Nottingham attacker Valdo Calocane

The Nottingham attacker Valdo Calocane, who stabbed three people to death in the city last year, will not be sent to prison after the court of appeal rejected an application to increase his sentence from an indefinite hospital order.

Calocane, 32, was sentenced in January after pleading guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to paranoid schizophrenia, and three counts of attempted murder,.

He killed the university students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and Ian Coates a 65-year-old school caretaker, and ran over three other people in a spate of violence through the East Midlands city last June.

The families of the victims said “justice had not been served” by the sentence and have been pushing for a hybrid order under which Calocane would be sent to prison if deemed fit enough to be discharged from hospital.

His sentence was deemed unduly lenient by the attorney general, who referred it to the court of appeal, where lawyers argued he should be given a life term that includes jail time upon being discharged from hospital.

Deanna Heer KC, representing the Attorney General’s Office, said: “The exceptional level of seriousness of the offences was such that the case required the imposition of a sentence with a penal element, an element of punishment.”

More details soon …