Nottingham attacks wouldn't have happened if authorities had listened, says family of man killed months earlier

The NHS trust that failed to stop the killer behind the Nottingham attacks in June 2023 has been accused of failing other victims. 

It was a sunny morning in June 2023 as news broke that a major incident had been declared in Nottingham. As the hours went by it emerged three people had been stabbed. 

Students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar had been walking home from a night out when they were fatally attacked. School caretaker Ian Coates was heading into work when he was killed.

When he heard the news, Delvin Marriott, says he knew instinctively that the killer of Barnaby, Grace, and Ian would turn out to be a mental health patient and blames the loss of his brother on the same system that allowed paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane to be out on the streets armed with a knife.

In August 2022, Delvin's brother, Rudi Marriott, stabbed his father 75 times in a frenzied attack at home in Nottingham.

The family says they had repeatedly called the police and mental health services about Rudi's violence but their warnings were ignored.

A recent NHS report found that in the four years before Calocane carried out his attacks there were 15 incidents of patients either under the current care of the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust or who had been discharged perpetrating serious violence towards members of the community. Most of the incidents involved stabbings and three cases resulted in fatalities.

Neil Hudgell, a lawyer representing the families, says the public inquiry due to begin into the deaths of the Nottingham attack victims needs to ensure the trust is held accountable for failings.

"I think we've seen tragic story after tragic story where patients, their families, and victims have been let down," he says.

"We need to get to the bottom of why that happened, who's responsible for that and to have some genuine change."

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Source: Sky News, 17 March 2025