999 call reporting Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber's stabbings played to inquiry
The caller broke down to the operator
A 999 caller cried and told police “my God that’s awful” as he reported that students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar had been stabbed in Nottingham, the inquiry into the attacks has heard.
The first emergency calls made after the two 19-years-old were attacked on Ilkeston Road, in the city, in June 2023, were played at the inquiry in London on Thursday.
One of the first calls received by Nottinghamshire Police began: “There’s been a stabbing on Ilkeston Road.
“There’s somebody lying in the street.
“I think they’re dead.”
The male caller said: “Oh, that was awful”, repeating this a number of times as he became more emotional as the call went on.
He told the operator he saw a black man with a black bag, all dressed in black go up Ilkeston Road towards the town centre.
The man told the police there was an injured man who seemed to be in his 20s lying in the middle in the road.
He said: “Blood all over their chest”, and said again: “My God, that’s awful.”
The caller, who explained he was looking out of his bedroom window from 500m away, said: “I heard lots of screaming and looked out of the window.”
He said: “I think he’s dead, he’s not moved a muscle.”
When the operator asked if there only one victim, the caller said a girl had also been stabbed.
He said: “She was sat in a driveway of one of the eco-houses over the road but I think she’s wandered off down the road.
“She was bleeding from the stomach.
“He stabbed both of them.”
The caller began crying as the operator asked him what the girl was wearing.
He then told the operator police had arrived and then said: “He’s alive.”
A series of 999 calls were played as Superintendent Simon Allardice gave evidence on Day 12 of the inquiry, chaired by Deborah Taylor.
Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake KC explained that Mr Allardice was being called on Thursday to establish a timeline of the “factual events” on June 13, when Valdo Calocane fatally stabbed University of Nottingham undergraduates Mr Webber and Miss O’Malley-Kumar and grandfather Ian Coates, 65.
Calocane, who admitted manslaughter and attempted murder, is detained indefinitely in a high-security hospital after prosecutors accepted his not guilty pleas to murder at his sentencing at Nottingham Crown Court in January 2024.
In another 999 call made at about the same time – just after 4am – a woman told an operator there were two people “in the road”.
She said: “I don’t know if they’ve been stabbed. A girl and a guy. I think they’ve been robbed or something.
“I heard them scream and I went there and I looked out the window and I saw someone. There’s two people lying down there.”
She said: “There’s a guy and a girl. They’re not too old. I don’t know if they’re OK. Could you please come? They’re lying down on the road right now.”
The caller said the offender had “walked off” and told police he wearing a hoodie.
She said: “He’s gone. I can’t see him anywhere in the road. But there’s a person lying down right there. He’s still there.”
And she added: “I’m afraid to go out there alone right now.”
The woman told the operator that she had filmed what she saw.
Earlier, the chairwoman told the inquiry that she had viewed the footage of the “brutal attack” on the students but this will not be played in the inquiry.
Mr Allardice told the inquiry some of the 999 calls made on that night have been lost as they were not recorded due to a “technical issue”.