Man who killed 3 in English city of Nottingham sentenced to high-security hospital, likely for life

LONDON -- A 32-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia who fatally stabbed two college students and a man just months away from retirement in the city of Nottingham, in central England, was told Thursday that he would "most probably" spend the rest of his life in a high-security medical facility.

The sentencing of Valdo Calocane followed three days of hearings in which family members of the victims condemned him as evil.

“The sentence I am about to hand on you will result on you being detained in a high-security hospital, very probably for the rest of your life,” Judge Mark Turner said as he began his sentencing remarks.

“Your sickening crimes both shocked the nation and wrecked the lives of your surviving victims and the families of them all," he added.

Calocane repeatedly stabbed Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, as they walked home around dawn on June 13, 2023 after celebrating the end of exams at the University of Nottingham.

A short while later, Calocane encountered school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, who was five months shy of retirement, and stabbed him and stole his van. He then ran down three people in the streets before he was stopped by police and Tasered.

Prosecutors decided not to seek a trial on murder charges after accepting Calocane’s guilty plea to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. Doctors said he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was in a state of psychosis that led him to think he needed to kill people to protect his family from an unseen evil.

He did admit to three counts of attempted murder relating to the pedestrians he deliberately targeted with the van he had stolen from Coates.

At the time of his rampage, Calocane was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court for assaulting an officer nine months earlier, during one of several occasions when police had taken him to a mental hospital.