A 19-year-old victim of the Nottingham attack has been branded a “hero” by her brother.
Medical student Grace O’Malley-Kumar (19) was fatally knifed by Valdo Calocane in June last year, alongside fellow Nottingham University student Barnaby Webber, as they returned from a night out.
Calocane also stabbed to death school caretaker Ian Coates and on Tuesday, prosecutors accepted his plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to “serious” mental illness.
Ms O’Malley-Kumar’s 17-year-old brother, James O’Malley-Kumar, told Sky News that he thing he missed the most about his sister is her smile.
He said: “Knowing that I’ll never see that [smile] again is something really hurts me.
“I have her earring in now, which I always keep in, because again it’s a part of her, and that’s how I try and get as close as I can to her.”
He added: “Grace’s last moments were in pain and that’s something that really hurts me to think about and she was a hero, that was her character.
“She tried her best to save her friend. That was how Grace lost her life in the most vulnerable manner. She would never leave a friend, never, and that was very evident from her last moments. She passed fighting.”
Ms O'Malley-Kumar was the daughter of Irish-born, London-based consultant anaesthetist, Sinead O’Malley.
The murdered woman’s grandfather is Prof Kevin O’Malley, who is also an anaesthetist as well as a former registrar and chief executive of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
He subsequently moved to the Middle East to help establish the RCSI’s college in Bahrain, where he was its founding president and still holds an emeritus position.
