Three years ago, Nottingham University students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, along with caretaker Ian Coates, were murdered by Valdo Calocane in a psychotic rampage. These were preventable deaths. Calocane should have been detained long before he went on his killing spree. The fact that he wasn’t is the consequence of a decade of progressive ideology in the NHS and police, who turned a blind eye to Calocane’s psychosis in part because he was a black man.

By 2023, there could have been no doubt about his violent tendencies. In 2020, he was arrested after he attempted to force entry into his neighbour’s flat, believing (falsely) that his mother was being raped inside. Just 11 minutes after he was released on the same day, he attempted to force a woman’s door. To escape him, she leapt out of the window, breaking her spine.

There has been an effort to reduce the number of non-white people detained under the Mental Health Act

There has been an effort to reduce the number of non-white people detained under the Mental Health Act

Calocane was never interviewed by the police, who were utterly incurious in their interactions with him. Due to his mental health issues, they chose not to pursue prosecution. Two months later he was given a formal diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and over the next two years was sectioned four times under the Mental Health Act. He allegedly assaulted his flatmate and a police officer, yet he was never properly committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Calocane’s care coordinator told police that prosecution for his crimes could be ‘triggering for him’ because he feels ‘a lot of shame and........

© The Spectator