'I thought about dying': Emma Webber reflects on year of hell and says family have been 'blown apart'

The mum of Nottingham attacks victim Barnaby Webber says she has gone through a year of hell as she marks the anniversary of his death. Emma Webber is still searching for answers about how paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane was able to kill her eldest child, talking to the Mirror about the "alternative universe" the family has lived in for the past 12 months.

He was on the run from police when he stabbed Barnaby and fellow student Grace O’Malley Kumar to death on June 13 last year. Calocane later killed school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, before mowing down pedestrians in the attack which shocked the nation.

A series of alleged failings by police, mental health services and the NHS continue to be investigated. And for Barnaby, Grace and Ian’s families, the long and lonely fight for justice continues.

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They will attend a vigil at the University of Nottingham at lunchtime on Thursday, June 13, with friends and hundreds of students. Emma told the Mirror of “dark” moments with her own mental health and anger at a justice system she says sides with the criminals.

In her only media interview ahead of the anniversary, Emma also candidly revealed how she:

• Has experienced days when she did not want to wake up

• Can never forgive Calocane

• Believes Barnaby and Grace were an ‘item’

• Classes 19-year-old Grace as her 'hero'

• Still cannot face scattering Barnaby’s ashes, and

• Has received a letter from Calocane’s family.

A pink rose bush is in full bloom as the early summer sun casts shadows across Emma and David Webber’s garden. It was planted last July after the funeral of their beloved son Barnaby, who was just 19 when he was killed.

Emma has placed two cuttings in a vase in his bedroom, which has remained untouched since that horrific day. She invited the Mirror into her family home in Taunton, Somerset, this week to talk about the past year.

As we chat, her husband David makes coffee and their youngest son Charlie revises upstairs for his final GCSE exams. “The past 12 months have been like being in an alternative universe,” Emma admits.

“Everything in our normal lives has completely changed. I’m speaking about things, experiencing things and having to do things that I would never have comprehended before June 13 last year.

“It has been classed as a catastrophic life event by specialists, and I totally get that, because it has been in every single possible way. Our family has been completely blown apart. I know I’ll never be the same person again, and neither will David or Charlie because of this.

“I think my biggest fear is that it’s going to define all of us or any one of us. I want to one day say that I feel happy or that I think I can have joy again.

“The hardest thing is, at the moment I don’t have the ability to even think what a normal life would be like, like it used to be. Every single first, since Barney died, has been almost impossible, but somehow we have got through them.

“No-one should ever have to bury their child. You hear that all the time but it’s true. The first Christmas, the first New Year, they were tough. Charlie’s 16th birthday in September was very tough.

“It’s been 12 months of constantly facing these awful firsts. I have spent the past week thinking about all the ‘last’ things we did a year ago. The last time we did this, the last time we did that.

“Barney only drove back up to Nottingham on the Tuesday before, to play ****** cricket. That was the only reason he was there, to play cricket.

“My last message to him was ‘When are you coming back? We’re looking forward to you coming back’. He replied, ‘I’ll be back Thursday or Friday, depending on my hangover’.

“I said, ‘You know you’re going to have to get a job to earn some money over the summer to pay for all the things you want to do?’ His last message was, ‘Yes, yes, ‘eyeroll’.

“I still have the message but haven’t looked at it for a while. The last time I looked at it was on his birthday. I can’t look at it.

“For the anniversary we’re going to Nottingham with Charlie, the Kumar family and the Coates family. We are going to recognise the horror and the tragedy of it and mark the emotional day.

“There will be a small vigil at the university, so we will be there. I’m making myself do it but I find it very difficult seeing his friends, both down here and up there.

“They are amazing kids. There is so much love out there, but it is difficult to see them. They will turn 21, they will have children. It’s painful. That’s the real pain. What’s lost. I won’t see Barney do any of those things.

“You have bad days and worse days. A small part inside me is still fighting to not want that to be the rest of my story. We try really hard to create a bit of normality, especially for Charlie, just like having the dogs, doing normal things, but it’s so hard.

“I don’t judge anybody in grief for not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to clean their teeth. I completely get that. But I’ve not done that, because I don’t want to just sink into any more sadness that I’m already in.” Emma wells up when asked if there has been a point in the past year where she has felt like giving up.

“Not just a point - lots of points,” she admits candidly. “The grief is so deep that you cannot see beyond it.

“I sometimes don’t know how I’m still standing. There have been really dark times where I genuinely haven’t wanted to be here anymore. There was one day when I just thought, ‘I don’t want to wake up’. I didn’t do anything proactive but I thought about dying. I remember thinking, ‘I actually don’t want to wake up’.

“I just couldn’t see beyond it. There was nothing in particular about that day. I reached out to get help, medical help.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say an intervention - I didn’t have people here with white coats on. It was talking to my doctor, talking to Dave, and recognising that I needed to go onto medication.

“I am able to admit that I have reached out to get help for those dark thoughts. I am taking medication and having some more therapy, because without those I don’t know if I would be able to survive.

“David and Charlie are my everything, they are my family. If I wasn’t here for them then that’s another catastrophic loss for them. It would be selfish of me if I wasn’t around anymore.

“I want to see them smile and laugh again, and we need to heal together, and I need Charlie to have a good life." Barnaby and Grace were walking home from a night out together when they were brutally killed.

CCTV of their final moments - which Emma cannot bear to watch - shows them strolling side by side. The teenage pair have always been described as friends - but Emma is convinced they were an item.

Asked if they were in a romantic relationship, she says: “Yeah, I think so, in some form or another. I know she meant a huge amount to him, because he never spoke about girls with me, but he had told me about Grace.

“The first time he introduced Grace into the story for us was before Christmas 2022. He said he was going out with his best friend that night for a couple of drinks.

“I said, ‘Oh, what’s he called?’ He said, ‘Actually, it’s a she. And she’s called Grace. She’s really good at hockey, you’d love her’.

“For him to say that made me realise he had feelings. He had a serious girlfriend previously and lots of ‘liaisons’, but there was clearly something special about Grace.”

The talented hockey player, from Woodford Green, bravely tried to stop Calocane attacking Barnaby. There are now calls for Grace to be awarded the George Cross in recognition of her remarkable bravery.

“Grace tried to save her friend,” says Emma. “Barney did not stand a chance because he was ambushed by this awful, evil coward.

“But Grace will always be my hero. She could have run. It doesn’t get more heroic than that.”

Emma has Barnaby’s initials tattooed on her wrist along with the roman numerals LIII, in memory of his number 53 cricket shirt. “I’m going to get another one, possibly this week if I have time,” she says.

“I want to recognise Grace because of what she did. If you read into spirituality there’s something about doves, or turtle doves in particular, together. I want to have two doves.”

Emma finds it understandably hard and painful to talk about the horrific events of 12 months ago. But she believes speaking about her experiences will help bring about change in how victims of crime and their families are treated.

Emma and David were staying at their holiday lodge in Cornwall on the day of the killings. They had chosen to go away while Charlie was away on an activities week with his school.

“I remember we woke up as normal and I had a Teams meeting at 9am,” she says. “Just as it was starting Dave said, ‘Something’s happened in Nottingham’. It was on the news.

“We then straight away tried to contact Barney and he was not answering his phone and continued to not answer his phone. We were trying to see where his phone was on the Find Me app and could see it was not at his student residence.

“As we now know it was on Ilkeston Road. We started to get really concerned. I had a feeling that something was wrong. Then the phone started moving. It moved to the police station, and then I just knew.

“We were literally watching it move on the app. We were of course panicking. The news was saying a man and a woman had been killed and another was gravely ill. I was like, well that can’t be Barney because he’s still a child.

“I was trying to phone the hospitals, and Dave had phoned and got through to the police. He said their voice changed a little bit when he said Barney’s name. They said we will take your number and call you back.

“We just got in the car. We were driving for about four miles when we got a phone call from a family liaison officer. They asked if we could pull over. They told us in the car park of a pub on the outskirts of Camelford. My world went black. I just screamed.”

The couple then had the horrific task of breaking the news of Barnaby’s death to his younger brother. “We had to drive to the other side of Torquay and he was waiting for us by the minibus,” Emma recalls.

“He didn’t know what it was about but there was a look on his face. I don’t think he ever thought for a moment that it would be something that bad. So we had to tell him, which was the most awful thing, the second-most awful thing I have had to do. The most awful thing to do was seeing Barney in the hospital.

“I chose to do that. We didn’t let Charlie come. It was myself, Dave and Barney’s three surviving godparents. I can’t talk any more about it. You can only imagine. That’s part of the trauma I’m trying to deal with. Suffice to say it was horrific.”

The families remain furious at the decision by prosecutors to accept Calocane’s guilty pleas to manslaughter. Emma believes her son’s killer has not been punished for what he did - and is determined to see him serve a jail term.

Asked if she can envisage a time when she would forgive Calocane, Emma says: “No, never. I have no capacity to forgive, now or ever.

“I fully respect other victims’ family members who have been able to forgive the perpetrators of heinous crimes, but I can’t and won’t. There’s no forgiveness. I have so much rage towards him.”

Recalling the moment she saw Calocane in court, Emma says: “I wanted to smash my hands on the glass dock and scream at him. Nothing can prepare you for having to sit in that kind of environment when that monster is feet away from you.”

Emma is equally unforgiving towards Calocane’s family, who moved to Haverfordwest, Wales, from Guinea-Bissau when he was a teen. She reveals how they recently sent an email, via police, to the families of his three victims.

“The Calocane family are clearly aware and we were aware for many, many years how sick and troubled their son and brother was,” she says. “His brother took phone calls from him the day before, the morning of and in between the murders. What did he actually do?

“We’ve had a letter from the family, written I believe on behalf of the parents and the brother. Dave and I are the only ones that haven’t read it. We can’t face it. But it’s there in the inbox.

“I know the contents of it, an overview, because James Coates and Sanjoy and Sinead have told me. From what I understand they don’t take any responsibility. They blame the authorities and the agency failings.

“I was thinking I will probably read it after the anniversary has passed. What I don’t want to do is inflict more anger upon myself. I have no compassion for the Calocane family. His mother hasn’t lost her son. He is still living and breathing. He is still there.

“I can’t think too much about them. It’s because of the Calocane family coming to the UK when he was 16 that my son is no longer alive.

“I wouldn’t trust myself to be near them at the moment. I don’t want to look into the faces of the people that brought this monster into the world. That sounds awful but it’s what I think.”