Barnaby Webber was a Somerset boy in his first year reading history. He had played for Taunton's youth cricket teams and was, by his family's account, the kind of teenager who picked up the youngest cousins at family gatherings and never put them down. Grace O'Malley-Kumar was from London, a medical student and a talented sportswoman who had played hockey and cricket for England's youth squads. The two had been friends since their first weeks at university. Walking back along Ilkeston Road in the Radford district at about four in the morning, they were attacked. An eyewitness later told police he had heard an awful scream. Grace was posthumously awarded the George Medal for the bravery she showed defending Barnaby. Ian Coates was a Nottingham father of three, a caretaker at Huntingdon Academy, on his way to open up the school. His van was stolen and used in the second attack of the morning.

Nottinghamshire Police received the call at 04:05 BST. Barnaby and Grace were found in Ilkeston Road. Ian Coates was found on Magdala Road around an hour later. The van that had been Mr Coates's was then driven into pedestrians at a bus stop on Milton Street in the city centre, injuring three more people - one of them critically before later stabilising in hospital. By six in the morning Valdo Calocane had been arrested. The attacker had stabbed all three of the people who died; the bus-stop victims had been wounded by the impact of the van. The city woke to find its tram service stopped, parts of the centre cordoned off, and a confused, frightened day beginning.

In November 2023, Calocane denied three counts of murder but admitted three counts of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility, along with three further counts of attempted murder. The prosecution accepted the pleas. On 25 January 2024 at Nottingham Crown Court he was sentenced to be detained indefinitely at a high-security hospital. The families spoke outside court. They had not been consulted on the decision to accept manslaughter rather than press for a murder conviction. Emma Webber, Barnaby's mother, used the word betrayed. Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace's father, spoke of failure at every level. Two later legal reviews - one of the sentence itself, one of the charging decision - upheld the original outcome. The families have continued, publicly and tirelessly, to argue that this was the wrong call.

Calocane had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had been treated under the Mental Health Act on multiple occasions in the years before the attacks. He had refused medication after release. He had assaulted police officers, threatened neighbours, and broken into a house in the weeks before June 2023. Nottinghamshire Police had warrants out for his arrest that were not enforced. The community mental-health team handling his care lost contact with him. An independent NHS investigation, published in February 2025, found that Calocane's care had been characterised by missed appointments, lost paperwork, and a string of opportunities for compulsory detention that were not taken. A judge-led public inquiry, demanded by the families and announced by the government in February 2025, opened in 2025 and is examining the failures across health, police, and prison services.

On 14 June 2023, the evening after the attacks, thousands of people gathered on the campus of the University of Nottingham and outside the Forest Recreation Ground for vigils. Cricket Tests at Trent Bridge that summer were played with black armbands. The University Hospitals NHS Trust set up a fund in the victims' names. The Webber family established the Barnaby Webber Foundation to support young athletes. Grace O'Malley-Kumar's family helped found the Grace Memorial Awards. Ian Coates's three sons asked, more than once, that their father not be forgotten among the more frequently named student victims. He worked at the school he was killed on his way to; the school named a garden after him. A city of 330,000 people did what most cities do after a thing like this. It lit candles, named the dead, and started the much longer work of demanding that it should not have happened.