'One of the Southport families reached out to me'

Ian Coates, 65, Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, both 19, were killed by a knifeman in Nottingham in June 2023

The mother of a student killed in the Nottingham attacks said she had spoken with the family of one of the three young girls murdered in Southport last summer.

Emma Webber, whose 19-year-old son Barnaby was fatally stabbed in June 2023, said the girl's family had reached out to her privately after the 29 July knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Mrs Webber said their families were both in an "awful club that you'd never want to be in".

She added that "it's very rare that you can say to someone 'I know how dreadful that is' and know that that person really does know, because what you hear is 'I can only imagine'."

Emma Webber described her son Barnaby as "probably the most genuine human being I have ever met... he was so funny, and he was loving his life, he was living it".

Mrs Webber said the conversation had not been "from a legal perspective or even a media perspective at all – it's very private".

Valdo Calocane, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia before the Nottingham attacks on 13 June 2023, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in January 2024.

The now 33-year-old admitted, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, the manslaughter of 19-year-old students Mr Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar as well as 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates.

Calocane, who stole Mr Coates's van and seriously injured three people when he drove it into them, also admitted three counts of attempted murder.

Last month, 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years for murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, in Southport.

Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice da Silva Aguiar, and Bebe King were killed in the Southport attacks