Son of caretaker murdered in Nottingham attacks discovered his father’s death on Instagram

The son of a school caretaker murdered by Valdo Calocane has said he discovered his father death through an Instagram message.

James Coates, the son of murdered 65-year-old Ian Coates, said he initially thought the message was a hoax at the public inquiry into the attacks in London.

Ian Coates was killed by paranoid schizophrenic Calocane just one hour after 19-year-old University of Nottingham students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, on 13th June 2023.

An inquiry into the attacks is being held at Mary Ward House in London.

James told the inquiry he was aware of a significant police incident in the city and later learned of a fatality on Magdala Road, which was close to his home.

He said: “It wasn’t until 3pm that I was walking up the road to my house that I decided to check Instagram. I’d not got notifications on, but I got a message from (a family friend) saying ‘I can’t believe what’s happening to your dad, please ring me’.

“And my first instinct is its a hoax message and its been hacked and trying to get me to ring this number and then I asked her is this a joke and she messaged again reiterating that I should call her.

“She was in hysterics, she said my dad had been involved in a RTA (road traffic accident) but she had seen what was going off in Nottingham. I still didn’t believe it.”

James further told the inquiry they only received a call from Nottinghamshire Police 10 minutes before former chief constable Kate Meynell did a press conference.

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“By then, we’d pieced almost everything together ourselves from social media and the news so then it was just a case of them apologising that we had to do that,” he said.

James’s brother, Lee Coates told the inquiry that he found Ms Meynell’s claims the officers were “doing everything for the bereaved families” rude and disingenuous.

He said: “She’d personally not made any contact with us. We’d had to fight to find out information about our dad.”

James told the inquiry: “Police logs showed my number was available to police at 12 minutes to eight in the morning and we didn’t get a call back until around 5pm, (which) is disgusting for me.”

The brothers said that they felt “abandoned and overwhelmed”, at not being fulling informed about what happened to their farther and that they were an “afterthought” when vigils were arranged around the city.

Nottinghamshire police have been contacted for comment.

If you have been affected by the content of this article, you can call the Nottingham SU Nightline on 01159514985 or contact the Nottingham Trent mental health support team on +44 (0)115 848 6623.

Alternatively, you can contact the Samaritans at any time by calling 116 123, or contact Shout, a 24/7 text messaging service, by texting the word “Shout” to 85258.