Valdo Calocane and Axel Rudakubana’s victims’ families now united by grief

The mum of murdered Nottingham student Barnaby Webber has found friendship and solace with one of the families who lost a young daughter in Axel Rudakubana’s Southport attack. 

Last month Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years for murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – injuring 10 others – at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in July 2024. 

This week the families of students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and dad Ian Coates, 65, have demanded to know how paranoid schizophrenic and triple killer Valdo Calocane was allowed to roam Nottingham and stab them to death on 13th June 2023. 

But Barnaby’s mum Emma Webber has also revealed how she has found support from the families of one of the Southport murder victims – as they share their grief together. 

And explaining their bond, she added that they are both in “this awful club that you’d never want to be in.” 

Emma Webber said the girl’s family reached out to her privately shortly after the Southport stabbing tragedy, in Merseyside, on 29th July last year. 

She said: “I’ve been in contact with one of the families who reached out to me because suddenly you’re just in this awful club that you’d never want to be in. 

“With Southport, it was one of the direct families of one of the little girls. 

“Actually we’ve been in contact – not talking from a legal perspective or even a media perspective at all – it’s very private. 

“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’.” 

Valdo Calocane, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after killing students Mr Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and caretaker Ian Coates before attempting to kill three other people, in a spate of attacks in Nottingham in June 2023.

Last month, Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years for the murders of Alice, Else, and Bebe. 

With careful planning, the genocide and torture-obsessed teen strolled into The Hart Space in Southport and started randomly stabbing helpless children. 

In a 15-minute rampage totalling around 300 stab wounds he murdered the three youngsters, injured another eight girls, dance instructor Leanne Lucas, 36, and have-a-go-hero Jonathan Hayes, 63, who bravely tried to stop his slaughter. 

After his arrest remorseless Rudakubana expressed joy over his stabbing spree to police officers boasting “it’s a good thing those children are dead. I’m so glad, – six years old, so happy. I don’t care, I’m feeling neutral.” 

But he was deemed fit to stand trial – before he ended up pleading guilty instead – and experts claim he does not suffer from mental illness, unlike Calocane.