A man has been sentenced to be detained at a high-security hospital for killing two university students and a school caretaker, and attempting to kill three other people, in a spate of attacks in Nottingham last year.
Valdo Calocane, 32, who goes by the name Adam Mendes, denied murdering Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
After the crown accepted his pleas, Calocane was sentenced at Nottingham crown court on Thursday.
Mr Justice Turner said: “You committed a series of atrocities in this city which ended the lives of three people in this city. Your sickening crimes both shocked the nation and wrecked the lives of your surviving victims and the families of them all.”
The judge added Calocane would “very probably” be detained for the rest of his life after “deliberately and mercilessly” stabbing his victims.
Calocane stabbed O’Malley-Kumar and Webber, both 19-year-old university students, in the early hours of 13 June last year when they were walking home from a night out.
He went on to stab Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, who was driving to work, before stealing his van and driving it into pedestrians in the city centre.
Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller sustained serious injuries but survived.
Police tracked down Calocane in the van minutes later and used a stun gun on him as he sat in the driver’s seat before arresting him. He was subsequently detained in a high-security psychiatric hospital.
There was an outpouring of grief across Nottingham after the attacks, with thousands of people attending vigils at Nottingham University and in the city centre to pay tribute to the victims.
More details soon …