Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane 'should have been arrested' under warrant before triple stabbing
The killer stabbed 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and grandfather Ian Coates, 65, in June 2023
Valdo Calocane should have been arrested just months before he committed the triple killings in Nottingham, an inquiry has heard.
Listen to this article
A warrant had been issued for the killer after he failed to appear in court for a separate matter in September 2022, before he went on to stab 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and grandfather Ian Coates, 65 in June 2023.
Kate Meynell, chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, apologised and told the public inquiry that Calocane should have been arrested when the warrant was authorised and said there was no excuses for why he wasn't.
The boss of the force, who has since retired after being diagnosed with cancer, told the hearing that officers weren't able to "prioritise execution of warrants".
Read more: Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane attacked married couple before carrying out triple murder
But while Ms Meynell accepted the warrant should have been executed, she said she did not agree that it could have changed the course of the events that took place months later.
She said: "There are a number of different scenarios that could have happened with the failure-to-appear warrant, if it had been executed."
The warrant was issued in September 2022, after Calocane failed to appear in court for attacking an emergency worker.
The inquiry, which is being held in central London, heard that details of the warrant were sent by Leicestershire Police to Nottinghamshire Police on September 23, 2022 by means of an "occurrence" on the police’s information management system called NICHE.
The occurrence went into an inbox on the system the same day, but was not regularly checked and there were no recorded updates on executing the warrant before the day of the Nottingham attacks in June the next year.
Ms Meynell said: "That is unacceptable. Our processes around warrants weren't adequate.
"We weren’t able to prioritise execution of warrants.
"It is something I fully accept responsibility for and have apologised in my statement, but I want to reiterate that apology, it is unacceptable and our processes weren’t as they should have been."
Ms Meynell added that she believes her officers were not using the NICHE system properly.
She admitted Calocane should have been arrested and agreed when Ms Langdale said there were "no excuses" institutionally as to why he was not.
Ms Meynell said: "Nottinghamshire Police should have made inquiries to try and locate him in order to execute that warrant.
"I accept on behalf of Nottinghamshire Police that VC should have been arrested in relation to that fail to appear warrant."
She added: "I fully accept we should have arrested him.
"My experience of the type of assault he was wanted for, he would have been bailed from magistrates (had he been arrested) and potentially it wouldn’t have been progressed with due to his mental health status at the time."
Ms Meynell also said the force has "completely changed" the way warrants are managed following the fatal attacks and have new processes in place which see warrants reviewed on a daily basis.
Asked if she thought the force had a "sufficiently investigative culture around policing', Ms Meynell said: "I think that now there is, I think at this time there wasn't.
"We have put a lot in place to improve our investigations and they certainly are improved, but at the time there were some shortcomings, that is why we have made the changes."
Asked what the shortcomings were, Ms Meynell added: "It is difficult for me to go into those details because I can’t recall exactly what they were and I don’t want to not do them justice.“Our investigative plan addressed those shortcomings."