Man criticises lack of lessons from fatal attacks

A young man, whose best friend was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic, has expressed his frustration over the lack of lessons learned prior to the Nottingham attack that resulted in three deaths. Michael Callaghan, 27, was left with a permanent disability, and his friend Jacob Billington was killed when they were both stabbed during a night out in Birmingham in 2020.

Authorities failed to prevent their attack, similar to the failures that led to the deaths of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley Kumar, and Ian Coates in Nottingham last year. In both cases, professionals knew the attackers were dangerous. Despite suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia, they were not engaging with health services or taking their medication, yet they roamed the streets armed with knives, attacking random victims.

Four years after his attack, Mr Callaghan continues to “learn to deal with living with one paralysed arm and identifying as a disabled person.” He was stabbed in the neck, resulting in a stroke that affected his sight, left arm, and leg. Surgeons had to remove part of his skull to relieve pressure on his brain, leaving a visible scar.

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*Warning – description of violence* McLeod carried out the eight attacks in the early hours of Sunday the 6th of September 2020. This is the 999 call made immediately after he killed 23y/o Jacob Billington, and severely wounded his friend Michael Callaghan #HeartNews pic.twitter.com/4psIWmzKb1

— Heart Midlands News (@HeartMidsNews) November 18, 2021

“It’s changed literally every single aspect of my life. Everything takes me longer now. I’ve got to plan ahead. I can’t work,” he shared. “All that being said, Jacob not being in my life any more has affected my life much more severely and obviously than any of the disabilities.”

Reacting to a critical report on the failings in managing Nottingham attacker Valdo Calocane, Mr Callaghan stated that lessons weren’t learned after a similar report on Zephaniah McLeod, the man who attacked him. “What on earth is going on for such obvious, avoidable things to just happen like that? He was a known dangerous person and let out with no supervision whatsoever, no medication taken. I don’t know. How on earth can that be allowed to happen?” he questioned. “It’s unbelievable that no one responsible for it, no one in any position of authority has ever been named or had to justify those decisions. It’s all been treated as though it’s just an unfortunate accident. They can’t all be unfortunate along the way.”

Jacob Billington’s mother, campaigning since her son’s death to highlight systemic failings, fears more deaths are inevitable. She now believes a full public inquiry is necessary to examine why the system allows so many dangerous individuals to slip through the net. “It absolutely makes it worse in that you feel that not only have you lost your son in the most horrific of circumstances, but the lessons that were supposedly learned from his death haven’t been,” she said. “I think sometimes the way these services are funded, it’s almost like these deaths are collateral damage to a poorly run and poorly funded system.”

On average, over 100 people a year are killed by someone with mental illness in the UK.