Patients from Nottingham killer's NHS trust carried out stabbings weeks before attack

According to Shelly, things massively deteriorated when Easom-Cooper turned 18.

During the grips of a psychotic episode, he left Highbury Hospital - where he was due to be sectioned - to kill a friend before he was stopped.

In July 2022, he was sectioned by the hospital - run by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust - for three months, but Shelly says she told staff he was not ready to be discharged.

"He was not OK when he was released," she said. "There was no way he was going to take his medication and I told them that... it was literally just a time bomb waiting to happen."

Easom-Cooper was placed in accommodation managed by a housing association, but Shelly said he was "unravelling" in the seven months he was there, and not taking his medication while under the care of the trust's community team.

Shelly remembers her shock and frustration when she learned about her son's knife attack.

"I just bloody knew this was going to happen," she said.

"I'm so sorry it happened. I really am. And as a mother, he's my son and he did that and that makes me feel quite ashamed."

She said the stabbing could have been prevented if her son's paranoid schizophrenia had been taken more seriously.

"It's disgusting that it takes someone to either lose their life or be stabbed before somebody thinks 'oh, hang on a minute, maybe we need to do something here'.

"The mental health services in Nottingham have routinely and systematically let him down and also the victim," she added.

Easom-Cooper was sentenced to a hospital order in December 2023.

Nine weeks before Easom-Cooper's attack, Junior Dietlin stabbed five "complete strangers" over a weekend in Nottingham and Mansfield in February 2023.

In what a prosecutor described as "a most odd and extraordinary case", Dietlin stabbed five men once in the right bicep and then ran away in separate attacks.

One of the men stabbed was former police officer Keith Grafton, who was walking home from a pub in Mansfield.

"Suddenly, [there was] a quick thump on my right arm... I know I've been stabbed straight away because I felt the knife going into my skin," the 71-year-old said.

Keith says his attacker then ran off before he could "get anywhere near him".

He said although the attack had not left any lasting injuries, he was now "very wary" about going out late at night.

Dietlin was sentenced to a hospital order, but Keith says he was "disappointed" Dietlin had not received a prison sentence.

Earlier this year, a review commissioned by NHS England into Calocane's care found major failings by the trust.

Dietlin's incident was highlighted among 15 in that report of patients "either under the current care of the trust or who had been discharged from the trust, perpetrating serious violence towards members of the community" between 2019 and 2023.

The independent review concluded the trust had an "absence of a robust approach to risk management".

Mr Grafton said he had not known Dietlin's history of mental health issues, nor that he had been previously sectioned.

He believes the decision to discharge his attacker into the community was "a big failing" by the trust, whom he blames for what happened to him.

"If they'd done their job properly, then it wouldn't have happened," he added.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.