Son’s death ‘has similarities’ to Nottingham killings, says mother after inquest

The mother of a young man knifed to death on a night out in Birmingham by a mentally ill knifeman has said her son’s case has “many similarities” to the triple Nottingham killings.

Joanne Billington, whose son Jacob, 23, was killed by paranoid schizophrenic Zephaniah McLeod during a 90-minute knife rampage in which he randomly attacked eight people on September 6 2020, said there is a wider issue around managing severely mentally ill individuals.

Speaking to the media after an inquest into her son’s death concluded at Birmingham and Solihull Coroner’s Court on Friday, Mrs Billington said there appeared to be similarities between her son’s killing and the Nottingham stabbings on June 13 last year.

Valdo Calocane, who also had paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in January for stabbing to death university students Barnaby Webber, 19, and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, as well as attempting to murder three other people using a van he had stolen from Mr Coates.

Mrs Billington said learnings taken from a serious case review in the aftermath of her son’s death “do not seem to have been put in place or made any changes at all” to the way agencies, including mental health teams, work together to manage violent and severely mentally ill individuals.

She said: “There’s also a wider issue around the management of severely mentally ill individuals who are violent and pose a risk to the public.

“Agencies need to be staffed, managed and monitored adequately in cases like ours, and other recent cases. If not, this will continue to wreck innocent people’s lives.”

She added: “We don’t yet know if that was a factor in the Nottingham case, but it probably may have been. So at the moment, without that knowledge, we don’t know how similar the cases are, but it certainly does seem to have a lot of similarities.

“It is why I was so pleased to get an inquest, because it does highlight the failings that seem to be systematic and it can be carried forward to hopefully prevent any future deaths.”

Mrs Billington, from Merseyside, said her son’s death was “every parent’s worst nightmare” and they were then “plunged into a world of court cases and barristers and serious case reviews”.

She said: “My son Jacob was a fantastic young man who lost his life in horrific circumstances, at the hands of an extremely mentally ill individual who had stabbed seven other innocent people on that night.

“This is every parent’s nightmare, and it became our reality.

“Throughout the sentencing and serious case review, we discovered that the offender was well known to all the agencies we would expect to keep the public safe.

“He never complied with anything the services offered, and refused to take his medication.

“He was released from prison with no supervision at the end of his sentence, and there was no effective release planning for this dangerous individual. And the risk to the public was never seriously considered.

“Services failed to such an extent that it was not known where he was, or even what city he was in.

“We also found out that McLeod had been subjected to enhanced public protection arrangements, but was removed from this six months before release simply because he did not comply with the process.

“This was a catastrophic decision which meant many effective measures for monitoring McLeod were taken away.

“This dangerous man with a severe and enduring mental illness, whose risks to the public were well documented, simply walked out of prison and disappeared.

“I am pleased the coroner has drawn attention to the need for agencies to work together to exchange information adequately and to follow their own procedures.”

She added: “Ultimately, the bottom of this, you’ve lost your child. You can’t start grieving until this process is done, but in some respects, it has kept me going.

“And I do feel that we needed to keep going with this to get to this point.

“Going forward, I’m hoping that I can help people in similar situations in some way just to honour Jacob’s memory, because he certainly didn’t deserve to die in the way he did.”

Anne Callaghan, the mother of Jacob’s best friend Michael who suffered serious injuries that he will live with for the rest of his life, said it was “quite depressing” to hear throughout the inquest how the different agencies involved in McLeod’s time in prison and his mental health did not communicate effectively.

She said: “The lack of public protection is just frightening really. I’m really pleased that we’ve had this inquest and I do feel that there has been a thorough review of everything that happened.”

Speaking about her son, Mrs Callaghan said: “Michael’s got permanent life-changing injuries, but he’s stronger and he’s making plans for the future.”