Grace's father as well.

Sorry, yeah, Sanjoy Kumar.

Dr Sanjoy Kumar is Grace's father.

He's a GP.

And so the story goes that Sanjoy's made aware that somebody had turned up at his surgery.

We do get lots of comments.

We do get lots of messages and people that want to support and are interested.

Do you agree with that? I do.

Mm.

They only moved here when he was sixteen, um, because of disagreement with the father.

There'd been violent incidents with the police being involved, um, uh, when he assaulted his younger brother, um, Elias.

Uh, so he moved out, and he moved into, which would now, we now know is that, that, that place, and that he was working at, as a cleaner at a college, and he was sharing that flat with college students.

He then moved to um, Birmingham, but he told his family he'd moved to Newcastle, and, uh, they never knew that he wasn't actually in Newcastle, that they never knew his address.

Um, he never told them where he was living, um, for years and years, and they only, I believe, got in contact again from about 2019, 2020, when he eventually goes to Nottingham University.

And the mother said in her evidence, um, when, when, when questioned, "Why did... why would he not... why did he refuse to give you his addresses or tell you where he lived?" And, and she said, "Well, he's a grown man.

Yeah.

Do you think this kind of politically correct application of the law is costing lives?

Yes, in a word.

Do you think this kind of politically correct application of the law is costing lives?

Yes, in a word.

And I think it's costing all communities.

I think it's costing, you know, the minority communities.

and ethnic communities' angst and lives as well, because it goes both ways.

And as I say, there's a fear of stigma and a fear of racial bias and a fear of mental health.

What do, what have you found, uh, a- as you've heard the evidence?

Well, they work in silos.

There's very little curiosity beyond their tunnel vision, quite often.

Unfortunately, we've come up against quite, uh, a defensive, evasive, uh, approach.

Uh, I would also say sometimes arrogant.

Um, there's, there's, particularly within the criminal justice system, as soon as we started asking questions as families, when we were presented with the horror that it was going to be manslaughter, um, and diminished responsibility, that was the moment where everything started to really change, and particularly the way that we, that we were talked to and dealt with.

And, and as Sanjoy has already said, he, he knows what he's talking about, not just from a medical perspective, but, I don't know how many years it was, you worked in, uh, as an FME in police stations, but, you know, he's, he's been there.

And you need two people.

...Emma.

It is.

And I, I'm prepared to say that in that we, th- we fought for the inquiry to, um, not only be a public inquiry, but for it to be publicly live-streamed and for the transcripts, um, and witness statements to be made publicly available.

And all of that did happen with very few exceptions.

And so, so I think anything that I would say would be, would be on the basis of, of what we've seen that's also publicly available.

And we've had evidence of complete U-turns and changes of stories.

For example, the senior investigating officer who told all of the families that there was no CCTV footage available of the interviews in custody with Kalocain, um, because they were audio and no comment, so they wouldn't have been of interest anyway.

Substance use

And ultimately, Valdo Calocane was not dealt with because of his skin color, which is why this ideology is so dangerous.

I think it's really important because the, the inquiry that we're just coming to the end of today, we, we've had five months nearly of evidence and, um, what, what has been a repeated theme and what's clear and, and, and especially with, with, uh, you know, other things like, um, Southport and, and what happened with, with, um, H- Henry Nowek is that the, the fear and the stigma is, is the, the, the...

I- it is preventing professionals to do their jobs and they're allowing targets, um, and objectives to override doing the right thing.

So the very first time that Calocane, uh, had interactions with the police was when he was violently, um, a- a- attacking and assaulting, uh, fellow neighbors in flats he was living in.

He was taken into custody.

Mental health assessment was done, and actually it was, we saw evidence it's, uh, too, too many Black men being detained, so he was released.

And then within hours he went back to the same flats, ended up with a, a woman, a young student, a female student fleeing for her life.

Well, it was the opposite of that, and yet no such conversation, and that's the point you're making.

Let's begin with what you've heard about how the killings could have perhaps been prevented.

It's, uh, it...

Well, it's, it's come out repeatedly, actually, throughout the inquiry.

The, the word stigma has been used quite a lot for many different e-examples.

I think that was really early on into the inquiry because the, the, the first, uh, half of it was, was sort of chronologically following the awful journey from May 2020 onwards when, uh, he became known to the police and, uh, and extensively mental health services.

So essentially what happened was he was causing, uh, a, quite a bit of commotion in the flats that he lived, so much so that, that he was assault-- he was about to assault others.

They were holding him to the ground.

Mm.

What, what's, what's been the biggest and most shocking thing you've learned in the weeks that you've been at this inquiry, Emma?

Oh, G- there are so many.

Uh, what, what I, what I think has probably shocked us the most is hearing from the responsible clinicians who were, uh, responsible for discharging Kalokaire in September 2022.

They sent a generic electronically m- mass letter to, uh, the GP practice of the Nottingham University, which has 44,000 students on their books.

They didn't put his diagnosis in there.

They didn't put any treatment.

They didn't put that he'd been non-concordant with medication, that he'd been sectioned four times for serious assaults, that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest on the assault on...

What was their defense, though, is that-

Always seems to be, doesn't it?

Yeah, as you do.

And, and then, yeah, the, the A levels in, in, in 2022.

And he, he was like one grade off doing what he was supposed to be doing at Nottingham, which was biz- international business.

But over the summer, he had been saying, "I'm not sure I want to do that.

I th- I really-- 'cause I really enjoyed history." He had this amazing, amazing history teacher that Charlie's got as well at, at, um, at school called Rob Gallimore, um, uh, he, who inspired him.

And, and so I said, "Okay, well, let's have a look 'cause y-you won't... y-you know, Nottingham's not easy to get into.

And when did you feel able to be told?

And what were the barriers that you faced?

How long have you got with the barriers and the close ranks and all of that that you've referred to? But it didn't begin to properly unravel for us as families that things were taking a very concerning direction until the November of 2023.

So we're talking, I don't know, however many months after this, you know, the horror period.

It was a turning point when it was the first time we met with the CPS online and a kind of a rushed meeting that, you know, we sort of had to insist on having before the hearing, preliminary hearing, I think it was called, you know, to accept the plea.

And That's the very first time that we were made aware that there was a done deal to accept his plea of diminished responsibility and therefore downgrade the murders to manslaughter.

But ironically, the other three counts of attempted murder still had to stand because the law doesn't allow for attempted manslaughter.

I mean, there's the irony.

I still worry, have we heard it before?