Valdo Calocane, 34, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sectioned under the UK Mental Health Act on four separate occasions. Each time he stopped taking his medication, the violence returned. Even so, in September 2022, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust decided to discharge him after he stopped engaging with his treatment.
Nine months later, in June 2023, Calocane stabbed to death students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, just five minutes from where they lived. He then tried to run over three pedestrians with a van.
Northumbria Police are now investigating the hospital for corporate manslaughter, something that has never before been proven against an NHS body. If successful, it would be the first conviction of its kind in the history of the British healthcare system.
