The mother of one of the teenagers killed in the Nottingham knife attack has revealed she is facing an ‘unimaginable horror’ after learning the BBC‘s Panorama will air interviews with the killer’s family.
Emma Webber’s son Barnaby and his friend Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, were stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane in the horror attack in June last year.
School caretaker Ian Coates, 65, was also killed in the knife rampage as he made his way to work in the early hours of June 13.
The families of the victims previously called for a public inquiry after paranoid schizophrenic Calocane, 32, was given a hospital order by pleading guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
Ms Webber, 51, has now said she is feeling ‘let down’ after she was told two weeks ago the BBC will air a show with the title The Nottingham Attacks: A Search For Answers.
She raised concerns about how the broadcaster has managed the production of the programme, saying it was causing ‘stress and trauma to people who are already shattered’.
Emma Webber’s son Barnaby and his friend Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, were stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane in the horror attack in June last year
Barnaby Webber with his mother Emma Webber and brother Charlie Webber (right)
Ms Webber, 51, has now said she is feeling ‘let down’ after she was told two weeks ago the BBC will air a show on Sunday titled The Nottingham Attacks: A Search For Answers
Valdo Calocane ‘brutally’ stabbed to death Grace (right) and fellow student Barney Webber (left), both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, in the early hours of June 13 last year
Ms Webber said according to The Sun: ‘All three families feel very disappointed and alarmed at the way they have managed this.
‘We feel very let down, very disappointed. We expected better — we deserve better.
‘The thought of seeing that family — seeing their faces and hearing their voices — brings me unimaginable horror.’
She added that although she welcomes any investigative journalism that seeks to find out why the attack happened, she is concerned by the way ‘it has been carried out by the BBC’.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is also understood to have contacted the broadcaster about the programme, urging producers to allow the families of the victims to see it before it is broadcast.
It is understood that the families of Barnaby, Grace and Ian were not asked to contribute to it.
BBC Panorama’s The Nottingham Attacks: A Search For Answers will take a look at Calocane’s declining mental health and the treatment he received from the NHS in the build-up to the attack.
It will seek to find out whether there were any systemic failings in his interactions with mental health services or missed opportunities.
A spokesperson for the BBC said its Panorama team had been ‘extremely mindful of the sensitivities in handling this programme’ and that they had been in contact with the victims’ families to advise them of its content.
They added that the programme was in the public interest and that it had been produced in accordance with the BBC’s guidelines.
MailOnline has contacted the BBC for further comment.
Calocane, 32, admitted three charges of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Nottingham Crown Court
Dr Sanjoy Kumar delivered a speech during a memorial event at the University of Nottingham to remember Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates
Hundreds of friends and fellow students joined the families of the victims for the vigil on Ilkeston Road, Nottingham
Flowers left on Ilkeston Road a year on from Calocane’s brutal stabbing of three people
Members of the University of Nottingham’s hockey and cricket team – which Grace and Barnaby was a part of – also took part in the occasion
One of the many floral tributes left at the vigil for the three victims who would be remembered as “the souls of the three vibrant, caring, hard-working and much loved family members who are no longer here”.
Barnaby and Grace, originally of Taunton and London respectively, had been strolling home from a night out on Ilkeston Road when they were set upon at around 4am by Calocane just a two-minute walk from their university accommodation.
They died after suffering multiple knife wounds.
Engineering graduate Calocane went on to kill school caretaker Ian Coates in the Mapperley Park area of Nottingham before stealing his van and ploughing into three pedestrians in Nottingham city centre.
The rampage finally ended when he was tasered by police officers.
A week after the horrific attack, the city of Nottingham came together in mourning as then Home Secretary Suella Braverman laid a wreath to the victims.
Engineering graduate Calocane pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and three counts of attempted murder, after psychiatrists said he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time.
He was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order at Nottingham Crown Court earlier this year – but relatives of the victims were furious that prosecutors didn’t pursue the more serious offence of murder – meaning Calocane will likely avoid having to spend any time in jail.
The families also hit out at a series of ‘missed opportunities’ by cops and medical professionals that could have prevented the deaths, including the fact that Calocane was wanted by police at the time of his violent spree for assaulting an officer months earlier.
The bereaved relatives also confirmed that they have accepted the offer of support from Neil Hudgell, of Manchester-based Hudgell Solicitors, and Tim Moloney KC, of Doughty Street Chambers, and their legal teams.
A number of probes are currently taking place into the handling of the case, including a College of Policing review.
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