NHS doctors have “blood on their hands” over their failings in the treatment of the Nottingham killer, the victims’ families have said.

Valdo Calocane was sectioned under the Mental Health Act four times before NHS services lost track of him and then discharged him, according to a new report by the health watchdog.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) identified five missed opportunities to deal with Calocane’s violent psychosis in the three years before he stabbed to death students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65.

The Health Secretary said the “distressing” report revealed that the deaths were “avoidable” and called for mental health services across England to apply its recommendations to avoid future tragedies.

The families of those who were killed during Calocane’s rampage through Nottingham in June 2023 said they had been “failed by multiple organisations” and said they had been told there would be a public inquiry.

“This report demonstrates gross, systematic failures in the mental health trust in their dealings with Calocane, from beginning to end,” they said.

“Along with the Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire police forces, these departments and individual professionals have blood on their hands.

“Alarmingly, there seems to be little or no accountability amongst the senior management team within the mental health trust. We question how and why these people are still in position.”

The families said they expecteded it to be the first in a “series of damning reports” as they called for senior managers to be held to account.

“Clinicians involved at every stage of Calocane’s care must bear a heavy burden of responsibility for their failures,” they added.

The report found a series of “errors, omissions, and misjudgments” in Calocane’s care by Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (NHFT).

Calocane was “acutely unwell” and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020, with a psychiatrist noting three years before the attacks that “there seems to be no insight or remorse and the danger is that this will happen again and perhaps Valdo will end up killing someone”.

He was sectioned four times in less than two years before health services discharged him for a lack of engagement, and when they no longer had his correct address.

Calocane’s family have also said they want answers and have called for a public inquiry.

His mother, Celeste, told the BBC: “There’s a lot of Valdos out there at the moment and if we haven’t got the capacity to care for them I don’t know what’s going to happen. The system is not fit for purpose.”

The report found there was a “clear indication” to detain him under section 3 of the Mental Health Act, which would have given doctors powers to keep him in hospital for up to six months and administer anti-psychotic injections against his will.

It would have also allowed medics to give him a community treatment order that would have allowed them to detain him again if he failed to take his medication or attend appointments – both of which he routinely did.

In August 2021, police searched his flat after he failed to attend a mental health assessment and found six months’ worth of drugs.

Medics also repeatedly failed to follow medical guidance for psychotic patients, ensure he was taking medication, and consult the police, his family or GP when discharging him, amid a litany of failings highlighted in the report.

During his third admission to hospital in September 2021, Calocane was forced to wait a week for a bed before he was sent to a private hospital in the North East.

He was then moved back to another private hospital in Nottingham where he was discharged in October on a Friday and without his family’s knowledge.

The Crisis and Home Resolution Team who helped to care for him in the community could not take him on then because of an “influx in GP referrals over the weekend”.

He was detained again in January 2022 after allegedly assaulting his flatmate, but a doctor ruled he could be cared for in the community. Nine days later he was sectioned for the fourth and final time.

NHS services then lost touch with him. They tried to cold call him at home but had the wrong address. When they phoned he said he was out of the country.

He was discharged for “non-engagement” despite evidence “beyond any real doubt” that he would develop “distressing symptoms and potentially aggressive and intrusive behaviour” as he had previously demonstrated.

The service had no guidelines for patients not engaging despite suffering from psychosis and schizophrenia, the CQC said.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said: “This report makes for distressing reading, especially for those living with the consequences of their loss in the knowledge that their untimely deaths were avoidable.

“Action is already under way to address the serious failures identified by the CQC and I expect regular progress reports from the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.”

Chris Dzikiti, CQC’s interim chief inspector of healthcare, said the review found a series of errors that “contributed to a situation where a patient with very serious mental health issues did not receive the support and follow-up he needed”.

He said: “Wider national action is also needed to tackle systemic issues in community mental health – including a shortage of mental health staff and lack of integration between mental health services and other healthcare, social care and support services – so that people get the right care, treatment and support when and where they need it.”

The five missed opportunities to deal with Calocane’s psychosis

By Michael Searles

Mental health services missed five opportunities to deal with the Nottingham killer’s violent psychosis over a three-year period, the watchdog has found.

A report into the care of Valdo Calocane by the NHS found a litany of  “errors, omissions, and misjudgements” in the lead-up to him killing Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65 in June last year.

Calocane was “acutely unwell” and had been diagnosed with psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia in July 2020. He had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act on four separate occasions.

The families of the victims have said the departments and staff at Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (NHFT) responsible for his care had “blood on their hands”.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) identified at least five missed opportunities by mental health services to deal with Calocane’s violent psychosis.

NHS staff allowed Calocane to reject antipsychotic drugs

It had been well documented throughout Calocane’s care that he regularly failed to take medication prescribed for his paranoid schizophrenia. He had also rejected therapy and was in denial about his condition and did not believe he was unwell.

On three of the four occasions he was detained in hospital, doctors considered giving him a long-lasting antipsychotic injection but chose not to because he preferred oral medication.

Such injections release medicine slowly so it lasts in the body for weeks and is recommended for patients who do not comply with taking their medicine, such as Calocane.

The CQC said there was a missed opportunity to change his medication and being sectioned “presented the possibility of changing his medicine to be able to treat his symptoms more robustly”.

It said doctors “did not adequately balance” Calocane’s wishes with the knowledge that he did not take his medication, which had been made clear by carers in the community and the police, who found six months’ supply in his house.

No psychological assessment or intervention

The first missed opportunity to stop episodes of violent psychosis occurred on the first day he was arrested and assessed.

Calocane was arrested after breaking into a neighbour’s flat, believing his mother was being raped there, but then released with a prescription after a mental health assessment.

He was then arrested an hour later after breaking into another neighbour’s flat, where a woman was so terrified she jumped out of the first-floor flat window, severely injuring herself.

He was sectioned for the first time, but while it was known he was psychotic, the hospital failed to give him a psychological assessment or provide any intervention, which is recommended by medical guidelines.

Staff failed to educate him on relapses, his condition or medication despite him struggling to come to terms with it, the CQC said.

Failure to plan his release into the community and tackle relapses

After his third admission to hospital under the Mental Health Act and subsequent release, the hospital missed an opportunity to discuss with other care teams why he continued to relapse and needed repeated sectioning.

The CQC said a meeting between doctors, psychologists and carers in the community, would have allowed them to come up with a better plan for his care and establish why his treatment plan was not working.

This could have involved considering the use of a long-lasting antipsychotic medicine to tackle his symptoms, or a community treatment order (CTO) that would have given them the power to force him to take his medicine and attend appointments, for which the report found “there was a clear indication”.

Failed to detain and force treatment on him

In January 2022, Calocane was sectioned for the fourth time but only under section 2 rather than section 3 of the Mental Health Act.

Detention under section 2 allowed staff to hold Calocane for up to 28 days. However, they could not force him to take his medication.

The watchdog said this was a missed opportunity because under section 3 they could have forced him to take long-lasting antipsychotic injections against his will and kept him in hospital for up to six months.

It would have also allowed for a CTO to be given, whereby he would live in a designated place, and if he did not take his medication or attend appointments, he could be easily detained again.

Lost track of him and discharged him

The final missed opportunity to try to deal with his condition came when the hospital decided to hand his care back to his GP. After losing touch with him and not having an updated address the community team discharged him for “non-engagement”.

They did this despite evidence “beyond any real doubt” that he would relapse into aggressive and intrusive behaviour and without consulting the GP or police.

The CQC said staff had failed to inform his GP of the known “risk of him not taking his medicine and the possibility of him having a psychotic relapse as a result”.

An 11-year-old girl has been taken to hospital after she and her mother were stabbed by a stranger in the West End.

The Metropolitan Police said its officers went to the scene of a stabbing in Leicester Square, London, where the girl and a 34-year-old were attacked.

A witness described the attacker putting the child in a headlock and stabbing her repeatedly.

The force said a man had been arrested and was in custody. Police do not believe the suspect knew the victims and said they did not believe the attack to be terror-related.

The girl and the woman have been taken to hospital and their condition is not yet known.

A security guard claimed he “jumped on” and wrestled a knife from the attacker.

The 29-year-old, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he worked at the nearby TWG Tea Shop. He said: “I heard a scream, at that moment I saw there was one person, roughly mid-30s or early 30s, and he was like stabbing a kid. I jumped on him, held the hand in which he was [carrying] a knife, and just put him down on the floor and just held him and took the knife away from him.

“Then a couple of more people joined as well, and we just held him until the police came, it took maybe three to four minutes for the police to arrive and then they just took him into custody.”

He said he and his colleagues had given first aid to the child before the police arrived, adding: “I just saw a kid getting stabbed and I just tried to save her. It’s my duty to just save them.”

He added that he did not know whether the girl was with family members at the time.

‘I was heartbroken’

A street performer who witnessed the stabbing said he saw a young, white male wearing a black T-shirt and jeans attack the pair.

Desmond, 45, said the knifeman focused the attack on the girl, putting her in a headlock and stabbing her.

Desmond, who performs as Darth Vader on the square “every day”, told The Telegraph that he was standing outside the Lego store when the stabbing took place.

He said: “I was looking forwards, and when I heard the screaming I had to turn to the side. And when I looked he [the assailant] was attacking the little girl. He was stabbing her with a knife.”

Before Desmond could get down off his stand, he said two men who appeared to be passing by intervened.

He said: “The two boys who were passing, they rushed the [attacker], and pushed him to the ground. And the police got there really quickly and handcuffed him and put him in a van.”

When the police arrived and put the attacker in handcuffs, Desmond told The Telegraph that the attacker did not resist: “He was not fighting or struggling with them, he was not struggling at all.”

Earlier, Desmond told reporters: “I think the woman was also stabbed once, but the child was the most targeted; he was stabbing the child several times.”

He added: “It was so terrible, I’ve never seen a thing like that. I was heartbroken, I saw the woman was screaming with all her strength.”

‘There was a lot of blood’ 

Rahul, a security guard at Gregg’s, said: “I was inside, but I came outside when I heard the noise of the girl crying ‘mummy, mummy’,” he told the Telegraph.

“There was a lot of blood, when I went there. On the girl and on her hands,” he said.

He added that the girl was taken inside the store until an ambulance and police arrived.

The manager of a tour bus company kiosk who noticed the suspect more than an hour before the stabbing said he appeared mentally disturbed and “like a homeless man”.

Abu Tauhid, manager of the Leicester Square Tootbus kiosk, told The Telegraph that the suspect’s behaviour caught his eye because he was “standing around” and “talking to himself”.

“When I first noticed him around 10am, I saw him standing there outside the M&M store and he was roaming around talking to himself,” he said. “He looked like a kind of homeless guy. That’s why he got my attention. Because I’ve worked here for a long, long time, so I know all the homeless people around here. But today is first time I saw him, I hadn’t seen him before. So that’s how I noticed him.”

Mr Tauhid added: “He was standing there looking around for a long time. So you can understand that his mental stability appeared questionable.”

An hour and a half later, Mr Tauhid noticed the police activity. “Around 11.30 I saw lots of police coming. And then I went down there to see what happened. And then I saw the police arrest him,” he said.

Footage of the scene shared with The Telegraph shows a man wearing a black T-shirt with what appears to be an Abbey Road logo and black tracksuit trousers. The two officers are seen pinning his arms behind his back.

Det Chief Supt Christina Jessah, in charge of policing for Westminster, said: “This is a horrific incident and our thoughts are with the victims and their family. We will continue to provide support to them over the coming days and weeks.

“I would like to pay tribute to the members of the public, including staff from local businesses, who bravely intervened in this incident. They put themselves at risk and showed the best of London in doing so.

“An urgent investigation is now ongoing and detectives are working to establish the details around exactly what happened.

“At this stage we don’t believe the suspect and the victims were known to each other.

“While we continue to work to establish the suspect’s motive, at this stage there is nothing to indicate the attack was terror-related.

“Detectives will be keen to speak to anyone who was in the area and may have information that can assist with their enquiries. I would urge anyone who can help to get in touch.”

A police cordon was put in place surrounding the double doors of the TWG Tea shop. 

An ambulance spokesman said: “We were called at 11.36am on Monday August 12  to reports of a stabbing at Leicester Square. 

“We sent resources to the scene, including an ambulance crew, an advanced paramedic and an incident response officer. We also dispatched members of our tactical response unit.

“We treated a child and an adult at the scene and took them to a major trauma centre.”

Leicester Square and the surrounding area –  home to shops, theatres, cinemas and restaurants – has an estimated 2.5 million visitors every week. 

The attack comes just two weeks after three children were killed in a stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.

As Ukrainian armoured vehicles maraud around the Russian countryside, they all sport the same symbol – a white triangle.

Tanks, trucks and Nato military equipment bearing the marking, daubed in paint or stuck on with tape, have forced the evacuation of some 180,000 Russian citizens from their homes.

It has been enough for some to brand the first invasion of Russian soil since the Second World War “operation triangle”.

In Ukraine’s Sumy region, a T64 tank with a triangle on its frontal armour was seen edging down a dirt road near the border.

More than 13 miles inside Russia, near the town of Cherkasskoe Porechnoe, a tank and other armoured vehicles carried the mark.

And when Ukrainian troops drove into the village of Guevo to replace the Russian flag with their own, they drove in on a pickup truck carrying the white triangle.

The battle marking was first spotted in June, being used by the Operational Command West group of forces stationed near the border with Belarus.

Ukrainian sources say the tactical marking is no more than a way for Kyiv’s forces to avoid friendly fire as they operate behind enemy lines in a chaotic, fast-paced mission.

Markers such as the triangle are a common part of modern warfare, especially when both sides use much of the same equipment and wear similar uniforms. Ukrainian forces will strap yellow or blue bands made from gaffer tape over their fatigues and helmets.

When Russian tanks and armoured vehicles invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many were daubed with “Z” symbols in white paint – a marking that, back in Russia, has become synonymous with support for Vladimir Putin’s war.

Kyiv’s incursion into Kursk entered its seventh day on Monday. Panic spread to the Belgorod region, and its governor announced that residents of the Krasnaya Yaruga district, located on the frontier with Ukraine, would be evacuated because of military activity.

Belgorod neighbours the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces began their cross-border raid on August 6.

On Monday, Tass, the state news agency, reported that 11,000 people had been evacuated. “It has been an alarming morning,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Belgorod governor. “[There has been] enemy activity on the border of Krasnaya Yaruga district.”

Mr Gladkov said Russian soldiers would be able to “cope with the threat that has arisen”, but added: “In order to protect the lives and health of our population, we are starting to move people who live in Krasnaya Yaruga district to safer places.”

Russian sources said Ukrainian troops launched an attack on the Kolotilovka checkpoint, a border crossing between Belgorod and Ukraine’s Sumy region, in the early hours of Monday.

It was claimed that Ukrainian troops, using armoured vehicles, tanks and artillery, opened fire at the checkpoint.

Ukrainian reserves are waiting at the rear, near the village of Pokrovka, prepared to join the fight as a second echelon force if a breakthrough is made.

“Apparently, the Ukrainian armed forces are not abandoning their plans to stretch our defensive lines, create the maximum number of points of tension and attempt to break through to the east with the aim of cutting off Belgorod from the north,” Rybar, an authoritative Russian military blogger, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The fighting in Kolotilovka is about 25 miles south of Sudzha, where Ukrainian forces have been advancing since last Tuesday as part of the surprise cross-border raid.

Alexi Smirnov, Kursk’s regional governor, told Putin on Monday that Kyiv controlled 28 villages and towns in the region. The area controlled was 7.5 miles deep and 25 miles wide, he said.

Twelve civilians had died and at least 121 others had been injured since the fighting broke out, he told the Russian president.

“As of today, 121,000 people have left and been evacuated,” the official said, adding that 59,000 more needed to leave the area. On Monday, Russian authorities were preparing “safe zones” for the Kursk residents displaced by the fighting.

A regional taskforce was set up to assist residents of the Belovsky district, part of Kursk south-east of Sudzha, to evacuate the area.

In recent days, Russia has been bringing in reserves in the hope of quashing the incursion, but on Sunday its military conceded that Ukraine had advanced 20 miles into Russian territory in some places. 

On Monday, Ukraine’s army chief said his forces had captured around 1,000 square kilometres in total. 

The Institute for the Study War (ISW), a  US-based think tank, said many Russian response forces had been hastily assembled and included units that were poorly prepared to stage a fightback.

Ukrainian troops equipped with top-end night vision goggles have staged several raids under cover of darkness, taking advantage of their technological superiority.

Battlefield footage geolocated by ISW analysts showed that they had made westward and northwestward gains, in areas where Russian sources had claimed the situation had been stabilised.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Monday that it had killed 260 Ukrainian troops and destroyed 31 armoured vehicles, including a tank and eight US-made Bradley fighting vehicles.

The ministry said its forces were “continuing to beat back the attempt by Ukraine’s armed forces to invade Russian territory”. However, it did not claim to have liberated any of the land lost in the Ukrainian advance.

In Ukraine, the battle has provoked rare joy among a population increasingly beaten down by war.

Emile Kastehelmi, an open-source intelligence analyst, said: “The best case scenario for Ukraine would probably be the following – Russia decides it’s not acceptable to leave any areas to Ukrainian hands, and will divert significant resources even from the most critical places and to get every square kilometre back, despite the losses.

“This would severely attrite the Russians, ease the pressure in other directions, and maybe even make it possible for Ukrainians to improve the tactical situation locally in the east.

“Regardless of whether the Ukrainians continue their advance, they have proved that occupation of relatively large areas is no longer a privilege of Russia. The war is now even more concretely a war on Russian soil as well.”

Three white police officers have won a discrimination case after an employment judge ruled that they were passed over for promotion because of their race.

Det Insp Phillip Turner-Robson, Insp Graham Horton and custody inspector Kirsteen Bishop claimed that Thames Valley Police “directly discriminated” against them in a bid to improve the diversity of its senior staff.

The tribunal heard that a superintendent from the force was told to “make it happen” by appointing an “Asian” sergeant to the rank of detective inspector.

This was despite warnings about the legal risks of not holding a competitive process.

The three experienced officers brought employment tribunal proceedings against the force, claiming to have been disadvantaged because of their race – described by the tribunal as “white British”.

They had been working with Thames Valley Police – which covers the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire – for between 19 and 26 years when they were blocked from applying for the role, a tribunal heard.

In August 2022, plans were discussed for a job advert for a detective inspector in the force’s “priority crime team” at Aylesbury, the hearing was told.

Having been made aware of the vacancy, Mr Turner-Robson expressed his interest on the same day, the Norwich tribunal heard.

‘Bame programme did not exist’

But the following month, Supt Emma Baillie made the decision to move Sgt Sidhu, whose forename was not provided, into the role without undertaking any competitive process or advertising the vacancy to staff, the tribunal was told.

The sergeant had not even been promoted to inspector at the time she was made detective inspector, the tribunal heard, after Dept Chief Constable Jason Hogg and the superintendent had “jumped the gun” and given her the senior role.

Mr Hogg, an experienced officer who joined Cleveland Police in 1995, became Thames Valley Police chief constable in April 2023.

The superintendent had been told to “make it happen” by the deputy chief constable and “took the decision without thinking it through”, the tribunal said.

“Clearly, Supt Baillie was only focused on ‘making it work’ rather than carrying out a balancing exercise of competing factors and considering whether her actions or the respondent’s actions were proportionate,” the tribunal said.

She then tried to “retrospectively justify” the decision by saying the appointment came under a “Bame progression program which clearly did not exist at the time”.

It continued: “Supt Baillie and no doubt the deputy chief constable had been warned of the risk of operating such a policy.”

‘Positive discrimination’

Employment Judge Robin Postle concluded that the three white officers were directly discriminated against by reason of the protected characteristic of race.

“The superintendent made a decision to move police sergeant Sidhu into the detective inspector role without any competitive assessment process taking place,” the judge said.

“It went beyond mere encouragement, disadvantaging those officers who did not share sergeant Sidhu’s protected characteristic of race and who were denied the opportunity to apply for the role.

“It was not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

“Clearly, Supt Baillie was only focused on ‘making it work’ rather than carrying out a balancing exercise.

“Supt Baillie’s decision… clearly constituted positive discrimination.”

A migrant who broadcast a TikTok video falsely claiming he was being chased during the riots has been jailed for three months.

Dimitrie Stoica’s livestream was seen by 700 people on Wednesday in what a court heard was a deliberate attempt to “stir up racial hatred”.

The 35-year-old Romanian told South Derbyshire magistrates’ court the video was a “joke” and he had hoped to gain more followers.

The father-of-three broadcast the clip at 10pm as one person asked him why he was running. Stoica replied: “I am running bro because they are running after me. They’re coming. Everyone get back.”

Seema Mistry, prosecuting, said: “The defendant was clearly trying to stir up racial hatred by implying he was being chased.

“The defendant was later approached by officers on the road. The officers asked if he had been targeted or was being chased.

“He replied ‘no, I’m going home’.”

“He was interviewed in custody. He said he wanted to get extra followers for his social media. He said he meant it as a joke.”

Miss Mistry said the video was made in Normanton, a suburb of Derby, where there were “ethnic minorities”. She said there had been no problems in the city the night the clip was broadcast.

Stoica admitted sending a false communication with intent to cause harm. He was jailed and ordered to pay a £154 surcharge.

Orchestrated disorder

District judge Michelle Jeffreys told him: “I cannot ignore what you did and the effect it would have had on the people listening.

“Who knows what they could have done as a result of listening to your commentary.

“We know recent disorder was orchestrated by people using social media.”

Andrew Cash, defending, said Stoica came to the UK in 2016 and his wife had their third child two weeks ago. He is awaiting a decision on his immigration status and is not allowed to work.

“He did not consider the effect on those who were watching his video who may have been expressing surprise, fear and concern that there was an incident in Normanton which there was not,” Mr Cash added.

Michelle Shooter, the Derbyshire assistant chief constable, said: “We have seen the extraordinary power of social media over the last two weeks. With that power comes even greater responsibility.

“As a force, we absolutely respect and protect the rights of individuals to legally express their views.

“However, the right to freedom can be limited, in particular where it is required to prevent crime and disorder.

“As has been made clear by forces, any criminal actions relating to the disorder, whether they be in person or online, will be dealt with quickly and robustly.

“Whether it is spreading misinformation or being involved in disorder the message is clear – as a service we are ready to respond and deal with any situation robustly.”