Valdo Calocane attacked warehouse workers a month before killings, inquiry told
The inquiry continues
Valdo Calocane attacked two members of staff when he was working at a warehouse a month before he committed the triple killings in Nottingham, an inquiry has heard.
The killer fatally stabbed University of Nottingham undergraduates Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and grandfather Ian Coates, 65, and attempted to kill three more people in the early hours of June 13 2023.
A month before the stabbings, Calocane, referred to in the central London inquiry as VC, began working as an agency warehouse operative for logistics company Arvato in Derby.
On May 5 2023, he attacked two members of staff, who were a married couple, punching the male colleague in the face before pushing over the female colleague and hurting her leg, the probe heard.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, a training coordinator for the company at the time, identified only as Louisa, said of the incident: “We heard a scream from the back of the warehouse.
“I then started to move in that direction.
“The two victims – the wife, she was in front of the husband, the husband was already on the floor. He had already been assaulted.
“As I got into the area I stood myself in front of VC so my back would have been to the victims.
“VC was just stood in front of me, there was no words coming out of VC’s mouth.
“What was different is for the seconds I was stood in front of VC his attention was not on me. He was looking through me and his attention was on the male victim that was on the floor.”
She said she remembers the male victim saying he had been hit to the side of his face, which had triggered an old injury, and that he did not know why he had been attacked.
An email from police was shown asking Louisa to make contact to help the case proceed, but she said on Tuesday: “I was not told by the business that I should be providing information to police, I believed that was being done by the business.”
Another Arvato worker, Volodimir, told the inquiry he saw what appeared to be a Stanley-type knife on the floor after Calocane attacked his colleagues.
“I was dealing with something else in the background and I hear unusual voice and screams, so I went towards the noise and I saw there was a male and female on the floor and VC punching the male in the face,” the witness said.
“So I straight away tell him: ‘Stop, you can’t do this, it’s not allowed,’ and he just go back from the victims and he said someone has pushed him.
“He said: ‘I lost my glasses’, and I noticed a knife was next to him and I kicked the knife out the way.”
He told the inquiry that workers were not allowed to use the type of knife he saw.
Volodimir described the incident as “very violent”, adding: “It was like, eyes pop out, and he was like, ‘don’t touch me, don’t touch me’.”
The operations manager at the time, Matthew, said Calocane “kept looking at the floor and was pacing” immediately after the event, but told the inquiry he could not see anything on the ground.
After being made aware by colleagues that a knife had been spotted and kicked away, Matthew said he mentioned it to police and told officers he thought there was “something not right with (Calocane) mentally”.
Calocane is currently 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.
The inquiry continues.