Attack could have been avoided, says father of murdered British Indian teen

London, August 13

The parents of a British Indian medical student who was stabbed to death with her friend in Nottingham last year said on Tuesday that the attack could have been avoided if the attacker’s mental health condition had been managed appropriately by the medics treating him.

Grace O’Malley Kumar, 19, was returning to her university with friend Barnaby Webber, also 19, when accosted by knife-wielding Valdo Calocane.

A review by Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates healthcare services in England, highlighted “a series of errors, omissions and misjudgements” by mental health services involving Calocane.

“I think I can categorically say that if this man had been treated and had taken his treatment, this whole attack would have been avoided,” Dr Sanjoy Kumar, the father of Grace, told BBC.

He has joined the affected families to demand a “statutory public inquiry led by a judge” to help change things for the better.

“We have to concentrate on Nottingham first and learn from what went wrong because these systems are parallel across the country,” he said.

In the wake of the stabbings in June last year, Caloane – in his 30s – pleaded guilty to manslaughter which resulted in him being sentenced to a mental health order to be detained in a high-security hospital.

The CQC review was ordered by the then health secretary, Victoria Atkins, into the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) – the healthcare body that dealt with his care between May 2020 and September 2022.

“He presented with symptoms of psychosis and appeared to have little understanding or acceptance of his condition. Issues with him taking his medication were also recorded from early on. This review finds that there appear to have been a series of errors, omissions, and misjudgements in his care,” the report finds.

UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government and Attorney General were “actively considering” how best to set up an inquiry.

In a joint statement in response to the CQC report, the victims’ families said: “This report demonstrates gross, systemic failures in the mental health trust in their dealings with Calocane, from beginning to end.

“Clinicians involved at every stage of Calocane’s care must bear a heavy burden of responsibility for their failures and poor decision making. Sadly, this is the first of what we expect to be a series of damning reports concerning failures by public bodies in the lead up to the killings of our loved ones, and beyond. Along with the Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire police forces, these departments and individual professionals have blood on their hands.”