Police told Nottingham stabbing victim’s wife he died in ‘car crash’
The partner of a school caretaker who was stabbed to death by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane has told an inquiry it felt like her partner had been ‘killed twice’.
Elaine Newton, whose long-term partner Ian Coates, 65, died after being stabbed by Calocane after Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were killed in the Nottingham attacks, was told by police that her partner was killed in a road traffic accident.
Ms Newton told the hearing of her initial denial that it could be Mr Coates, believing he was at work, and that it took more than four hours before she was told the truth about how her partner had actually died.
She said: ‘They said he was in an RTA, a road accident. I said, ‘He will be at work, it’s not Ian’. They said ‘No, it’s an RTA’. I said ‘Did he crash into anyone? What happened?’
Ms Newton was told by officers that they couldn’t tell her any more details until police liaison officers later told her the truth.
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‘And they looked shocked on their faces and said, ‘You’ve got the wrong information, You’ve been told the wrong information. Ian’s been killed, and he’s been stabbed.’ That’s how I learned,’ she told the inquiry.
She added: ‘It felt like he’d been killed twice. It wasn’t right. It was not right, it was a mess.’
Ms Newton said she had told Nottinghamshire Police that she did not want to see the face of Calocane, but was later shown videos of him walking around the city on the morning of the attacks.
Ms Newton also said she only became aware of previous incidents involving Calocane and the police during the inquiry process.
During a meeting with the now-retired chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, Kate Meynell, Ms Newton was told about a WhatsApp group in which police officers had discussed the fatal attacks.
‘I should have been given information about his past, not straight away, but down the line. She could have given me more information when I went, rather than just telling me about the WhatsApp group,’ she said.
In the wake of the attacks, Ms Newton said she was given excuses about why Nottinghamshire Police allowed Calocane to ‘roam’ around the city after the attacks.
‘They said it could be quite a few reasons, there were not enough police that morning, Nottingham is a big place,’ she added. ‘Those were the excuses I got. I did say it was early in the morning and there wouldn’t have been a lot of people around. They said they might just not have had enough police officers that morning.’
Calocane was discharged by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in September 2022. After finding out about his past behaviour, she told the NHS Foundation Trust she wasn’t interested in apologies – ‘too little, too late’.
‘I think the police have let the public, myself and all other families down,’ she added.
‘They didn’t do their job properly, they didn’t communicate with the NHS, the NHS didn’t communicate with the police. So I think between them all they’ve caused this.’
Who was Ian Coates?
Ian Coates, 65, a school caretaker, was stabbed to death in the early hours of the day of the Nottingham attacks in 2023.
He was named by his employer, the L.E.A.D. Academy Trust, which said he was a ‘beloved and respected member of the Huntingdon Academy staff’.
His sons, Lee and James Coates, described him as a ‘massive, massive football fan’ and a ‘great father’, adding that his death had ‘rocked everyone’s world’.
His sons told reporters the school caretaker would have been on his way to work at the time of the attack.
‘He was a die-hard Forest fan and an avid fisherman,’ Lee said. ‘He used to take under-privileged kids fishing just to get away from crime. You genuinely couldn’t find a nicer guy.’
Lee continued: ‘He was due to retire in four months, he was still grafting. It’s rocked everyone’s world.
‘If we had to think about it, he’d be lying in a bed with us holding his hand, him dying naturally in 20 to 30 years’ time.’
Lee’s brother James added: ‘Not dying on a street because some guy decided it’s not his day today.’
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