Global Courant
LONDON — Police worked Wednesday to uncover details and motive of a knife-and-van attack that killed two 19-year-old students and a 65-year-old man in the English city of Nottingham, leaving three families in mourning and a university town In shock .
University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar have been stabbed to death on a street near student accommodation in a frenzy that started before dawn on Tuesday.
Police say a 31-year-old suspect then killed school janitor Ian Coates more than a mile away when he was on his way to work, stole his van and hit a group of pedestrians. Three people were injured in the collision, one of them critically.
The attacks lasted about 90 minutes over a large swath of Nottingham, a university city of about 350,000 people, some 175 kilometers north of London.
Nottinghamshire Police released more details about the attacks on Wednesday, saying a man matching the suspect’s description attempted to enter a care home after the two students were stabbed but was stopped by residents.
Police subdued the suspect with a stun gun after he exited the van and approached them with a knife and detained him on suspicion of murder. Police said they believe the attacker acted alone and collaborated with counter-terrorism agents to try to establish a motive. The authorities have not labeled the attack as terrorism and the police are investigating, among other things, the mental health of the suspect.
The BBC and other British media reported that the suspect, whose name has not been released, is originally from West Africa and has lived legally in Britain for many years with no criminal record.
UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said police were “working hard to establish the full facts and provide support to all concerned”.
“They are currently open to the motives behind these attacks, but I can confirm that Nottinghamshire Police are being assisted in their investigation by Anti-Terrorism Police, although this does not mean it is currently being treated as a terrorist attack,” he said. Braverman. told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
Kumar was in the first year of a medical degree at the University of Nottingham and Webber was studying history. A prom scheduled for Tuesday evening was cancelled, but instead many students gathered to light candles for the victims during a vigil at St. Peter’s Church.
Thousands of students and staff attended a second vigil at the university on Wednesday, where they lined up under an incongruously bright summer sun to leave flowers around a large rectangular fountain. Many cried, and the parents and siblings of the two dead students joined hands in support.
He heard sobs as the fathers of the victims addressed the crowd and remembered how their children loved college life.
“The love we have here, I wish we had it everywhere,” Sanjoy Kumar said in a breaking voice. “Take care of each other.”
Webber’s parents and brother said he was “a beautiful, brilliant, bright young man, with everything in life to look forward to.”
“A talented and passionate cricketer, who was delighted to have been selected for his university cricket team,” the family from Taunton in southwest England said in a statement.
“Complete devastation is not enough to describe our pain and loss at the senseless murder of our son.”
O’Malley-Kumar also played cricket and had played hockey for England youth teams. Woodford Wells Cricket Club near London said she was “a fiercely competitive, talented and dedicated cricketer and hockey player” who was “fun, friendly and brilliant”.
Her parents and brother said she was a “really wonderful and beautiful young lady”.
“Words cannot explain our complete and utter devastation. She will be missed so very much. We were so incredibly proud of Grace’s accomplishments and what a truly sweet person she was.
Coates’ employer said he was a “loved and respected” member of staff at a primary school in Nottingham.
His son, Lee Coates, said his father was an avid football fan and avid fisherman who would retire in four months.
“He used to take underprivileged kids fishing to escape crime,” said Lee Coates, leaving an England football shirt with the handwritten message, “Daddy, love you always and forever” on the spot where his father died.
“You really couldn’t find a nicer man.”
