A WOMAN who broke her back after jumping out of a window to escape the Nottingham attacker was told by police he “could have killed” her three years before his fatal knife rampage, a public inquiry heard.
Valdo Calocane attempted to kick down the door of the flat where his Italian neighbour – named only as Feven – was living in May 2020.
She jumped 10ft out of a window in fear and fractured her vertebrae, requiring surgery.
Speaking through an interpreter, Feven told the judge-led inquiry that Nottinghamshire Police officers visited her a week after she was discharged from the hospital.
She said: “They told me I had been very brave. If I had not jumped out of the window many things could have happened to me – they said he could have killed me or he could have been violent.”
Despite this, Feven, who was a 22-year-old student at the time of the attack, said officers advised her the paranoid schizophrenic had been sectioned but “could not be jailed” due to his mental health problems.
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She added: “I was very upset, because the damage he had caused is going to be forever…
“When they told me he was not going to be prosecuted, I felt disappointed, very angry.”
The attack came just 45 minutes after Calocane, now 34, had been released by cops for trying to break into another neighbour’s property earlier that same day.
He had been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and taken into custody where a psychiatric nurse said he was “hearing voices” and appeared to be suffering from psychosis.
But a mental health team decided not to section him after looking at research evidence which shows the “over-representation of young black males in detention”, it is said.
Yesterday, the Inquiry heard there is nothing in police logs to suggest the two attacks were ever formally linked.
Inspector Katie Eustace, who arrested Calocane over the first incident, said she “cannot find” her body-worn footage on the force’s computer system despite marking it for retention.
When she was asked by inquiry barrister Julian Blake whether she thought the case had “been given the attention it deserved”, she responded: “No, I don’t think it was.”
PC Richard Marsden, who attended the attack on Feven and visited her after she was discharged from hospital, denied telling her it “could have been much worse”.
But when asked by inquiry chairwoman Deborah Taylor if police should have linked the incident with the earlier criminal damage to another neighbour’s door, he responded: “They should, yes.”
The Inquiry also heard from Liam, the neighbour who rang police after the first incident.
He told how he had a second run-in with Calocane in July 2020, after he attempted to bash down another door, and restrained him.
In a 999 call played to the hearing, he could be heard telling the call operator he thought the attacker was on “some sort of narcotic”.
Liam said Calocane knocked on his own door several times up until early 2022.
On the last occasion, he said the triple killer “threatened to rape” his partner.
But the couple chose not to report this to police as they felt it would be “a waste of time” given their prior experience with cops.
On June 13, 2023 Calocane fatally stabbed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, before attempting to run down three pedestrians.
He was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and handed an indefinite hospital order in January 2024.
The Inquiry continues and will report back in full next year.
