James, the 39-year-old son of Ian Coates, listened to a Ring doorbell recording of the moment his dad was killed by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane as he drove to work in June 2023
THE son of Nottingham rampage victim Ian Coates says hearing a Ring doorbell recording of his dad being stabbed to death is something he will take to his grave.
Tragic school caretaker Ian, 65, was brutally attacked by deranged killer Valdo Calocane as he drove to work in June 2023. The paranoid schizophrenic had earlier knifed university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, as they were walking home from a club.
Their killings shocked the nation and led to an outpouring of grief and calls for reforms of mental health services and murder laws.
The victims’ families will mark the second anniversary of the horrific rampage in private next month. And their battle for justice – which has led to a statutory review into the attacks – continues.
Ian’s son James says fighting for his dad has become his sole purpose in life. The 39-year-old has been having weekly therapy sessions to deal with the trauma of that fateful day.
He recently met with police to listen to a Ring doorbell audio recording of his dad’s final moments as he was stabbed to death.
He says: “It didn’t catch [the killing] on camera but it captured the audio of it. It’s probably the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
“I’ll take that sound to my grave. I never want any of my family members to have to hear that. It’s haunting. It was the sound of my dad being stabbed to death.
“I’ve seen hundreds of horror movies where you see people getting stabbed to death and you just think, ‘That’s the sound that they make’. But it’s not like that at all. It was a completely different sound – a sound I’ve never heard before.
“And it’s hard, it’s tough to hear your dad [being killed].”
Asked why he chose to listen to the recording, James says: “I was attending weekly therapy sessions. I was struggling to find the next step to try and get through this process.
“I felt that looking at the crime scene photos and hearing the audio might do something to help get me through the grieving process. And in a way, it did. It helped me figure out what happened.”
Calocane, 33, was charged with three murders and three attempted murders after taking Ian’s van and driving it at three other people.
In November 2023 he admitted three manslaughters and the three attempted murders on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
His guilty pleas were accepted by prosecutors after psychiatrists said that he was psychotic at the time of the attacks, and in January last year he was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.
James believes his dad died a hero after being tricked into helping Calocane as he drove to work.
He says: “My thought initially was that my dad slowed down because Calocane was flagging him down and he stabbed him through the window. But it seems my dad got out of the van and that’s when he’s been attacked.
“I think Calocane pretended to be injured. My dad’s pulled over, got out the van to go and help him and that’s when he’s been stabbed.
“It was in his character to always help anybody that needed it.
“His only reaction would be to get out of the car and to help somebody if he knew that they needed help.
“He had been stabbed 15 times and had defensive wounds on his hands, which shows he was trying to put up a fight. But he was frail. He was retirement age and was skin and bones.
“All he did was smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. So he was no match against Calocane, who was a huge unit at that time.”
James learned of his dad’s death in an Instagram message from a pal as he walked home from work.
He recalls: “Straight away I thought it was a hoax, I thought her account had been hacked or something.
“So I didn’t believe it. I sent a message back, asking if it is for real, and got a reply saying, ‘Please James, call me, your dad’s dead’. So I rang the number and she was in hysterics on the phone, saying she’d heard he’d been killed in some sort of car accident.
“It wasn’t until I called my wife to explain to her that my dad might be dead that it really hit me. I lost it. My legs turned to jelly and I had to hold on to a lamppost to keep myself up.
“Dad was separated from my mum but it was still heartbreaking having to tell her the news.”
Hours later Nottinghamshire Police rang James and confirmed his worst fears – Ian had been a victim of the rampage. Asked if he will ever forgive Calocane, his son says: “No, not at all. He 100% knew what he was doing.
“He planned it, he brought weapons in advance. He chose victims who were vulnerable.
“Nothing he could ever say would make me forgive him for what he did. Calocane is an evil piece of garbage. I wouldn’t even call him a human being.
“He wanted to kill and he would have continued to keep killing if he wasn’t stopped by the police.” Recalling the moment he first set eyes on him in court, James adds: “I remember thinking how huge he was.
“Excuse my French, but he was a brick s**house. I could understand how he could easily take on two students and then take on my dad.”
James talked to us at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground stadium, where Ian used to watch his beloved Reds.
“Dad was Forest mad,” he recalls. “He even had Forest tattoos that he did himself in his younger days. He saw them lift the European cups and the league titles. He was at Hillsborough when the disaster happened.
“He didn’t really talk to us too much about it at the time. But as we got older he spoke about how he saw the fans- -clambering to get out. He said it was awful.
“When he had kids and became older and had a job and other responsibilities, he put visiting football grounds to one side. He chose to focus on family and when he did get any spare time, he would be fishing. That was his big passion.”
James remembers Ian as strict, but now recognises he was trying to lead his kids in the right direction.
He says: “Our upbringing was very family oriented. Everything was always done as a family, like trips and -holidays. We also went away with other families as Dad loved being part of a group and loved get-togethers.
“ He was a painter and decorator by trade but I always remember him as a school caretaker or site manager. He was a handyman at heart and could do a bit of everything, so it was the ideal job for him.
“If they needed a plumber, a joiner or an electrician, he knew the basics for everything. He also knew enough people in the trades that they could come and check his work or if he needed an extra hand.”
James says that he and his brothers, Lee and Darren, have tried to cope in different ways since their dad’s shocking killing. They were initially reluctant to speak to the media, which meant there was less coverage of Ian’s tragic death than there was ofGrace’s and Barnaby’s.
James says: “It was like right from the beginning he was the forgotten victim. There was a lot of talk about Grace and Barnaby – and then ‘the other man’. It was a while before he was known as ‘Ian Coates the caretaker’.
“It was nobody’s fault really though. I get it. Grace and Barney were two 19-year-old students. They had the rest of their lives ahead of them.
“But a lot of people don’t -understand my dad had seven grandkids and suddenly he’s gone and they’re asking questions.”
It later emerged that -Calocane was on the run from police when he killed Ian, Grace and Barnaby, and had been sectioned four times in the past.
After Calocane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order, the attorney general appealed, arguing that the sentence was unduly lenient.
That appeal was then rejected by judges in May 2024.
A judge-led public inquiry into the failings that allowed Calocane to carry out the attacks is expected to last two years.
Asked if he would speak to -Calocane one day, James says: “I would sit in the room with him, but I know that I’m not going to getthe answers I want. I want to know why he killed my dad.
“There are so many things that could have been done that would have stopped him being out on the streets, attacking people, and those chances weren’t taken.
“I hope that the inquiry will finally get answers as to why things weren’t done properly.”
It is nearly two years since the attack but coming to terms with Ian’s death is not getting any easier for his grieving son.
James says: “In fact, it’s got even harder. After [his death] I feel I went back to work too quickly. I threw myself into my work for 18 months and tried to keep my head down and put on a brave face.
“But then it really hit home that I was struggling and I wasn’t letting people know how hard I was struggling.
“So since then, I have taken a leave from work.
“I feel my job, at least for the next few years, is going to be fighting for Dad, fighting for his voice as well as Grace and -Barnaby’s.
“There has to be a point where laws are changed so things like what happened to my dad don’t happen ever again. Knife crime in Nottingham is horrendous. We need to stop it.”