2024-01-25 14:32:02
LONDON (AP) — A 32-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia who fatally stabbed three people in Nottingham, central England, last year will spend most of his life in a high-security medical facility.
Valdo Calocane’s sentence was announced following three days of hearings. Relatives of the victims criticized the verdict and the entire legal process, arguing that Calocane should have been tried for murder, rather than manslaughter, on the grounds of diminished responsibility as a result of his mental illness.
Doctors argued that Calacone felt he was controlled by outside influences and that his family was in danger if he did not obey the voices in his head.
In his sentencing, Judge Mark Turner said Calocane, who had been on authorities’ radar for years and was wanted by police at the time of the attack, “deliberately and mercilessly” stabbed college students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley. Kumar, both 19, and the school’s caretaker, Ian Coates, 65, who was months away from retiring, in the early hours of June 13 last year.
“The sentence I am regarding to hand down to you will involve your detention in a high-security hospital, most likely for the rest of your life,” he told Calocane, who stood with his hands at his sides and showed no emotion.
“His sickening crimes shocked the nation and ruined the lives of his surviving victims and their families,” he added.
Prosecutors decided not to seek a trial on murder charges following accepting Calocane’s guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. Doctors said he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was in a state of psychosis.
At the time of his attack, Calocane was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court for assaulting an officer nine months earlier, one of several occasions in which police had taken him to a psychiatric hospital.
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