Brother of Nottingham student ‘aged five years’ when he learnt of his death

The brother of a student from Taunton who was stabbed to death in Nottingham by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane has said he feels like he “aged five years” when he learnt of his death.

Charlie Webber, now 18, was aged 15 when Barnaby Webber was attacked alongside two others in the city where he was studying history at university.

The teenager said he was told by a teacher that his parents were on their way to collect him from school in June 2023, and realised something bad must have happened.

“I was in year 10, first year of GCSEs, and I’d just come back from messing around with my mates on a school trip,” he told The Sunday Times.

“Suddenly there were news crews outside our front door. I aged five years just like that.”

He told the paper it was a “really hard thing to wrap your head around – the idea that someone becomes stuck in time when something like this happens.

“In my head, Barney is three or four years on from the age he was when he passed away, but actually he’s frozen at 19.”

Describing how the family dynamic has changed since his brother died, he said he felt “pressure,” as “I was trying to keep myself out of trouble, away from anything bad, away from being in danger”.

“I kept thinking, ‘my parents have already lost a child. If something happened to me, it’d be brutal for them’.”

He said he did not want to undertake therapy to start with, as “I didn’t want the stigma”, but added that eventually having it has helped him “massively”.

Calocane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempted murder over the killing of Mr Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, before he tried to murder three pedestrians with a van.

Mr Webber’s mother, Emma Webber, has claimed it was a “miscarriage of justice” that Calocane “got away with murder” after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) accepted his not guilty pleas to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

An inquiry into the attacks recently finished hearing evidence, with the findings due to be published next year.

Last week she called on the Government to meet her as she said there must be an independent re-examination of Calocane’s prosecution and sentencing.

Mr Webber said that after the sentencing, he “was not in a good state mentally. I was really upset, really angry”.

“I could feel the anger slowly building up, and that’s when I realised I had to dial myself in and focus this energy on something that can be positive.”

He said he has now thrown himself into the Barnaby Webber Foundation, a charity set up to support young people who are facing life challenges and is following his family’s motto to “be more Barney”.

“I felt like I needed to step up a little bit and get behind the cause. I needed to fight for what we think is right,” he added.

Mr Webber said watching his parents during the inquiry has given him “a huge sense of pride”.

“They’re so strong,” he added.

“It’s incredible that someone can go from being so devastated and upset in private to putting on a brave face.”

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