27 April 2024 , 10:29
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The son of a school caretaker who was killed in the Nottingham stabbings has paid tribute to his "selfless" father.
Ian Coates, 65, died along with 19-year-olds Grace and Barnaby Webber on June 13 last year. They were stabbed to death by by Valdo Calocane, 32, a paranoid schizophrenic, who has since been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order. The caretaker's middle son, James Coates, has now revealed that still texts his father to this day - and sent his first message only five days after the tragedy. On Father's Day, he told the keen angler that he hoped he was "fishing in peace".
James said to the Mail Online: "It's my way of speaking to him and telling him I miss him. If there was to be an afterlife, I'd hope he'd be doing the things he enjoyed." On the fateful day last year, James said he woke up to an hear of incident in Nottingham city centre on breakfast television. But it was only at 3pm, when he received a text from a relative saying that they "couldn't believe" what had happened to Ian, when he realised it had struck so close to home.
James Coates, Ian's son, spoke outside Nottingham Crown Court earlier this year (Joseph Raynor/ Nottingham Post)"I thought it was a scam and that her phone had been hacked . . . I called her after she messaged again, and she was in hysterics saying my dad had been in a car accident and was dead", he said. Information about what had happened to his dad was slow to come at first, and the family gathered at his home to make frantic phone calls to the police. It was only 12 hours after the attack that they got a call back from detectives with more detail - by which time they had already built up an idea of how the stabbings unfolded from the news and social media.
Frustration came when he heard Rishi Sunak and other politicians saying that victims were "getting support from the police" in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which he said wasn't true. A clearer picture emerged when James's brother Lee received a call from police telling them their dad had been stabbed at seven times, with defensive wounds on his hands showing where he had attempted to fend off Calocane. James said he had "never cried so much in my life" after hearing of the nature of the attack.
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Attacker Valdo Calocane, 32, has been handed a hospital order (PA)He would later find out in court that his dad had been stabbed 15 times, and that Calocane had stolen his van to seriously injured three other people. James is currently receiving counselling, but has only received six sessions after being forced to wait nine months for an appointment.
His comments come after the mum of Baraby Webber penned a damning open letter to members of a police WhatsApp group where a message was posted describing her son as being “properly butchered”. Mrs Webber said the “callous, degrading and desensitised manner” of the comments has caused “more trauma than you can imagine”.
Ian died alongside 19-year-olds Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar (PA)She added: “When you say ‘a couple of students have been properly butchered’ did you stop to think about the absolute terror that they felt in the moment when they were ambushed and repeatedly stabbed by a man who had planned his attack and lay waiting in the shadows for them.
“When you say ‘innards out and everything’ did you think about the agony they felt and the final thoughts that went through their minds as this vicious individual inflicted wounds so serious that they had no chance of surviving. Did you relate the excited urgency in your message of spreading ‘big news’ and preparing for a busy shift that countless lives had been destroyed forever.”