The knifeman who killed three people and tried to run down three others in a spate of attacks in Nottingham should face a harsher sentence, the Court of Appeal was told.

Valdo Calocane, 32, stabbed university students Barnaby Webber, 19, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, in Nottingham in the early hours of June 13 last year, and attempted to kill three others.

Calocane was given an indefinite hospital order for manslaughter by diminished responsibility in January 2024, after Nottingham Crown Court heard he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Turner, told Calocane he would be detained indefinitely in a high-security hospital "very probably for the rest of your life".

His sentence was referred to the Court of Appeal as potentially unduly lenient.

Deanna Heer KC, for the Attorney General’s Office, said Calocane should instead be given a life sentence as part of a “hybrid” order, where he would be treated in hospital before serving the remainder of his sentence in prison.

She said: “The exceptional level of seriousness of the offences was such that the case required the imposition of a sentence with a penal element, an element of punishment.

“The harm caused and the harm risked to members of the public by his crimes was extreme.”

Peter Joyce KC, for Calocane, said he would not have committed the offences "but for" his paranoid schizophrenia.

Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, who heard the case at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London alongside Mr Justice Edis and Mr Justice Garnham, said judgment would be delivered at a later date.

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