Valdo Calocane phoned his brother to tell him it was the last time they would speak and he should leave Britain with their family, a prosecutor said Tuesday in the middle of a brutal rampage in which he fatally stabbed two college students and a 65-year-old man. When his brother asked if he was planning something stupid, Mr. Calocane replied: “It is already done.” Mr. Calocane had just killed university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, while they walked home after a night out celebrating the end of exams at the University of Nottingham. Prosecutor Karim Khalil said he would go on to stab school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, steal his van, and run down three other people in the streets of Nottingham in June.
Family members of the slain teens sobbed during the hearing Tuesday and condemned Mr. Calocane for his cowardice and cruelty as they spoke of their devastating loss, expressing their unfathomable grief. Mr. Calocane, 32, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempted murder at a hearing last year, but prosecutors had not announced whether they would accept the pleas or pursue murder charges at trial. During Tuesday’s hearing, they accepted his guilty plea on the basis of diminished responsibility after psychiatrists said he suffered paranoid schizophrenia. Prosecutors said their decision didn’t diminish the gravity of his crimes, emphasizing the deliberate and merciless way the defendant acted.
His rampage spread fear throughout the city for hours on June 13 as police tried to make sense of multiple crime scenes around the city and determine whether they were the acts of one person. In the days that followed his arrest, counterterrorism officers helped other investigators search for a motive for the brutal murders. Born in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, Mr. Calocane arrived with his family in the UK from Lisbon, Portugal, in 2007 at age 16. He earned a mechanical engineering degree at Nottingham University. His mental health problems first surfaced at the university when he believed roommates and the British intelligence service, MI6, were spying on him. He was found to be psychotic but a low risk to others after an arrest in May 2020 for damaging a door in his apartment. He had approached the two students and and pulled a dagger from his bag, and repeatedly stabbed Webber, O’Malley-Kumar showed “incredible bravery” and tried to fight him off, pushing him into the road. When officers gave chase, he sped away and struck two other pedestrians. Officers pinned in the van about five minutes later and tasered Mr. Calocane when he brandished a knife and arrested him.