Image source, The Nottingham Inquiry

• Triple killer Valdo Calocane first showed signs of being mentally unwell during the pandemic, Celeste said
• She told the inquiry he would talk about his mental health with his brother, Elias, to protect her as she was generally anxious
• Valdo was arrested in May 2020 after an episode of psychosis and Celeste travelled to Nottingham despite lockdown restrictions
• She believed that, while unwell, her son posed "a risk to others"
• Elias gave a journal of messages between Valdo and himself to medics after his brother was sectioned, but Celeste said she did not read it
• Valdo did not want to take his medication, but Celeste said she was not informed
• Celeste felt her son was discharged "too early" and she wanted a diagnosis of what was wrong with him
• She raised concerns that her son was not being monitored after his discharge from hospital
• Celeste spoke on multiple occasions about feeling powerless over his treatment and she said she was not told that, after a second admission, doctors felt Valdo could end up killing someone
• A schizophrenia diagnosis made in 2020 was not relayed to the family
• Celeste increasingly lost contact with her son and she was not made aware when he was sectioned for a fourth time
• Celeste said Valdo did not have an issue with needles

Celeste drove to Nottingham to see her son.

Without an address for Valdo, she said she drove to the university campus and called her son to say she wanted to see him.

"He said he was too busy," she said. "I waited for two hours and just left. I couldn't do any more."

Celeste said that by this point she "didn't know where he was".

The inquiry has now broken for lunch.

In February 2022, Valdo was not speaking to his mother as much as he used to.

In July the same year, Gary Carter, who was Valdo's care co-ordinator at the time, contacted Celeste to say her son had informed him he was out of the country.

We heard earlier in the inquiry that Valdo had been disengaging with mental health services.

Celeste told Carter that, as far as she was aware, Valdo was in Nottingham.

When asked about their conversations around that time, Celeste said Valdo told her he had been taking his medication and was fine.

Langdale said: "So, he just lied to you."

Celeste told the inquiry she had no address for her son in Nottingham, so she was unable to visit.

She said: "I've seen him in July 2021 when he came home.

"Even when he was in hospital, he would try and convince me not to go, not to drive.

"He wouldn't give me the address so I couldn't visit him."

When speaking on the phone, she said her son would not show his face over FaceTime.

While in hospital under a section for a fourth time, Valdo requested that his mother was not given any information.

Celeste said she was not even told her son was in hospital when phoned by Dr Jonathan Gibson.

She said: "I didn't even know what kind of doctor he was."

Celeste explained details of her son's paranoia, of "the mental health service out to get him, liaising with the university, the police and MI5".

The issue of Valdo not accepting depot medication has been mentioned several times during the inquiry.

It was heard earlier in evidence that Valdo did not want depot medication because he did not like needles - that is what he told medical professionals.

Langdale, counsel to the inquiry, asked Celeste: "As far as you're concerned and if anyone had ever asked you, did VC ever have an issue with needles?"

Celeste replied: "No."

She added Valdo had received all his vaccinations.

Celeste has told the inquiry she was never told about Valdo's fourth admission to hospital in January 2022.

She said she learned about the admission later, and thought, "it can't be". She added it was confirmed when she received Valdo's medical records in 2024.

Celeste told the inquiry she would have contacted the hospital if she had known her son had been admitted.

She was not made aware he was in hospital, even when speaking to doctors during that admission, she said.

Valdo was given a mental health assessment and a decision was taken not to detain him after a fight with a flatmate.

In January 2022, police were called when Valdo - who is being referred to as VC during the inquiry - put a flatmate into a headlock and took him hostage in their flat in Faraday Road, Nottingham.

The inquiry previously heard that, the following day, Dr Mike Skelton, a consultant psychiatrist, decided Valdo did not pose a serious enough risk to be detained and allowed him to return home.

Celeste said: "I was quite shocked they didn't detain him. If the professionals assess and say VC needs to be going to hospital, I agree.

"At this point they just said 'altercation' - no-one told me more than that. That's all I knew.

"I didn't even know if he lost his accommodation or not until this inquiry."

In December 2021, Celeste learned Valdo had withdrawn consent for his mental heath team to contact her about his care.

Birtles, his care co-ordinator, told Celeste she could not disclose information but could offer her support.

Celeste told the inquiry she had looked online to see "if there was any act that can give me some power to overrule that".

But, she said, there was nothing she could do.

Asked if she thought Valdo had capacity to make that decision, Celeste said: "I don't think he understood. That's why I thought there could be something in the law.

"But they told me I can't, even though he may not have capacity."

Celeste was upset she had not been informed of her son’s discharge from Priory Hospital.

She told the inquiry: "I thought that was at least one of my rights for them to tell me when he’s going to be discharged. I wasn’t happy at all."

Celeste asked what her son’s medication was, but she was told they did not know and that discharge details had not been given to Birtles as the ward had been busy.

By November into December, Valdo had been missing appointments and it was suspected he was not taking his medication.

Celeste said: "I didn’t know much of what was going on. The ties cut completely."

Valdo appealed being sectioned in 2021 and a tribunal was held in September the same year.

Celeste told the inquiry she wanted to be involved but was not, and was told that she could only agree or disagree with his Valdo's admissions.

She said she told Valdo's team to detain him, if ever he needed to be.

"I never saw any of Valdo's decisions until I asked for the medical records," she said.

She asked for those records in 2024, after Valdo was sentenced.

During his third admission, Valdo was sent to a hospital outside the area called Cygnet in Darlington, before being transferred to the Priory Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

"I thought Cygnet and Priory were different wards," Celeste said.

"I didn’t even know it was a different hospital. That's how bad it was."

Celeste was told by Birtles in August 2021 that her son was showing signs of paranoia and had not taken his medication "in a while".

In September the same year, she was told that he believed the government was monitoring him.

Celeste told the inquiry: "It just replicated the concerns that I had when I called them in May, the same kind of lines of conversation.

"I was concerned. He must have stopped his medication, the way he was acting.”

Valdo was given a mental health assessment after attacking police and taken to hospital in Darlington.

Speaking about watching the bodyworn camera footage back as part of the inquiry, Celeste said: "I was shocked, I didn’t expect the violent nature of what he did."

Image source, Supplied

After Valdo had broken into premises in Brook Court, he declined a criminal caution by police, but later contacted them asking to change his mind.

Celeste said, from her recollection, she told him by the time he got to court, he could have to pay thousands and "convinced him" to accept the caution.

Asked if Valdo discussed any of the events involving him breaking into flats at Brook Court, Celeste said: "No, from his first and second admission his memory was very fragmented."

She added Valdo "would have to ask what the doctors said, what was going on".

In June 2021, Celeste said she had spoken to her son a few times and professionals had visited him.

She told the inquiry she thought "maybe I'm worrying for no reason".”

Celeste was starting to feel her son was "masking" his symptoms, but she was "listening properly" so could pick up "red flags".

In July, Valdo drove to the family home in Wales but refused to come into the house.

Celeste said: "It was really strange."

But reassured by professionals, she said: "Maybe I just need to adjust to this new life now."

A relapse prevention plan was created with Valdo and his mental health team in January 2021, the inquiry was told. Celeste was not asked to be involved with that plan.

During that period though, she said she was speaking to him and did not notice anything significant in his speech.

But on 29 May, she called the crisis team, concerned he was becoming unwell.

"By that point, his thoughts were quite disorganised and I could hear that he was - he wasn't making sense, so that's why I was worried," Celeste said.

The crisis team called Valdo and recorded there were no thoughts of harm to himself or others.

But on 31 May, Valdo visited Thames House in London, the MI5 headquarters.

Celeste said she was never made aware of that.

As Celeste was in daily communication with her son, Rachel Langdale KC - counsel to the inquiry - asked if she felt it had been "handed over" to her to detect changes in Valdo's behaviour after his discharge from Highbury Hospital.

She said: "Even though I wasn't trained, I was the one that was raising the flags and saying 'this is what's happening'.

"Even when I say something, it takes maybe weeks or months before they do something about it."

But by October, however, Celeste had been unable to contact her son for two months.

She said: "I was worried."

Celeste raised her concerns with the EIP team, and Gary Carter - who was Valdo's care co-ordinator at the time - visited his address and asked him to ring her.

"I can't remember if he did," Celeste said.

Valdo then had conversations with Dr Bilal Burri, who in his notes said he would speak to Celeste regarding her son's welfare.

Celeste raised concerns about Valdo's risk to others with his mental health team in August 2020.

Asked if anyone discussed this with her, she said: "I just had to navigate the system myself and try to make sense of what is going on."

She told the inquiry no-one explained the risks to her, what she needed to look out for, or what could happen.

"I was just navigating the system on my own," she said.

Celeste also told the inquiry no-one spoke to her about Valdo's risk to himself.

"At this point I don't even know what can happen to him. I'm just like living in anxiety basically," she said.

The inquiry heard Valdo had expressed concerns about not being where he would like to be in his life in August 2020.

Celeste said she believed her son was reflecting on being about 28 at the time and that he should have finished university by then.

She told the inquiry it was her understanding he did not wish to go to university after school.

Celeste said she had told him it did not matter if he did not go to university straight away.

She added she had also spoken to him about the importance of taking his medication.

Celeste, the inquiry heard, was told her son would be visited daily by the mental health crisis team on discharge from hospital.

But she told the inquiry she was not informed of the importance of her son having insight into his condition in order to improve.

Celeste was told her contact in the community would be Claudia Birtles, her son's care co-ordinator with the Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) team.

Celeste said Birtles did not communicate with her "in detail", and added: "When I came to have the medical record and read it, I thought 'I don't know anything', that's how I can put it."

At the end of Valdo's second admission at Highbury Hospital, a diagnosis of "likely schizophrenia" was recorded in his notes.

Asked if she was told this, Celeste said: "Never."

Similarly, asked if she was told of her son posing a risk to others or a risk to himself, Celeste said: "Never."

She added: "I could see he was an empty shell, he wasn't there. I told the doctor he wasn't ready for discharge.

"They didn't agree and said he needs to go back to the community, they didn't like to keep people long in hospital, so I haven't got a choice. I haven't got power to challenge that."