Tears and flowers to remember victims of a cowardly killer

THE heartbroken families of two students killed in the Nottingham knife rampage were united in grief yesterday as they retraced their children's final steps to mark the first-year anniversary of their deaths.

- Paul Jeeves

Loved ones of Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, both 19, laid a trail of flowers as they made their way along the same road the undergraduates walked before they encountered blade-wielding paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane, 32.

Grace's ashen-faced parents Dr Sinead O'Malley and Dr Sanjoy Kumar wept as they hugged each other alongside Barnaby's parents Emma and David.

Lee Coates, son of school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, who was the killer's third victim when he was ambushed while on his way to work in the early hours of June 13 last year, also joined the vigil.

Yesterday Emma revealed she believes her son and Grace had been "an item" when they were killed.

Their vigil saw bouquets laid on the city's Ilkeston Road, yards from where the students lived, before a memorial ceremony at Nottingham University and Huntingdon Academy in St Ann's, where Ian worked. They were joined by relatives and friends from the city university, Grace's former school and hockey club in London and Barnaby's school and cricket club in Taunton, Somerset.