London: In a knife and van attack earlier this week in the English city of Nottingham, a 31-year-old man was charged with killing two college students and a school caretaker. He made an appearance in court on Saturday.
Three security guards were on either side of Valdo Calocane as he entered Nottingham Magistrates' Court. Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, both 19 years old and students at Nottingham University, were stabbed to death on Tuesday night as they were returning home in the early hours of the morning in a street close to student housing. He is accused of their murders.
He is also charged with the 65-year-old school caretaker Ian Coats's murder, vandalism, and pedestrian colliding.
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Calocane is also accused of trying to kill the three pedestrians in a hit-and-run accident that critically injured one of the victims.
The criminal only spoke to confirm his statements.
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He used the name Adam Mendes and claimed to have no fixed address. The nation was shaken by the shooting spree on Tuesday in Nottingham, a 350,000-person university city in central England. Thousands of people, many of them college students, attended vigils to remember the victims at the college and in the city's centre.
In an effort to identify a motive, police said they thought the suspect acted alone and were collaborating with counterterrorism officers.
Authorities have not classified the attack as terrorism, and they are looking into various matters, including the suspect's mental state.
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The suspect, according to the BBC and other UK media, is from West Africa and has lived there legally for a long time.
Although Calocane was a former student at Nottingham University, police earlier stated that they did not believe this to be related to the attack. Calocane was remanded in custody and is scheduled to show up in court on Tuesday in Nottingham