Elias said he saw his brother once during 2022, when Elias was going to a concert in Birmingham with his sister and Calocane insisted he needed to travel there.

"It was good that we saw him," he said.

But he added: "He was just sort of acting on his paranoia. We tried to reason with him in the build-up to this, 'it's OK, we're safe, you don't need to'."

Watching the police bodyworn camera footage as part of the inquiry was "shocking", Elias said.

He said: "Now I'm much more familiar with psychosis and what it can look like, it sort of explains how he was able to reason with us... that doesn't necessarily mean that he's not psychotic.

"It shows that psychosis can look like calmness. It doesn't necessarily look a specific way."

Elias told the inquiry he was "confused" by the responses to their concerns from Valdo Calocane's medical teams.

He said: "The sort of signalling that we're receiving throughout is that the things that we're worried about, or that we're raising, aren't really issues because they don't lead to any action.

"It goes back to the earlier point that we were making about the whole thing feeling quite episodic.

"I felt quite confident that he was unwell, and I guess especially him saying that he hadn't taken his medication and he was sounding more like he had done prior to May 2020, or July 2020.

"But we were told that he is well. You take it that I must have it wrong, these things don't work in the way I think they do."

The inquiry has heard that between January 2020 and June 2023, Elias saw Calocane twice, once in 2020 and once in 2022.

Asked why, Elias said it was partly down to Covid-19 restrictions, but partly because "after a while, it became much harder for me".

He said: "I struggled with it all - my relationship with him, if you will."

Elias said he had tried to reason with his brother's delusions about being monitored, but realised he could not, and found his brother going in a "loop" with his mental health.

Emily Williamson
BBC News

The families of Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates collectively shook their heads in disagreement as they listened to Elias Calocane telling the hearing about the first time he knew of his brother's paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis.

He told Rachel Langdale KC, counsel to the inquiry, that was in October 2023 - four months after Valdo Calocane's killings in June 2023.

The triple killer was diagnosed in July 2020, while being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

After Valdo Calocane was discharged, Elias said he was hopeful that his brother would recover.

He said: "It was my understanding that 20% of people who have such an episode recover and don't have another. I guess I was hopeful that Valdo would be in that 20%."

Doctors said they would not diagnose Calocane unless he was admitted again.

"I was really keen to know what it was at the time," said Elias.

"It's part of the lack of understanding we as a society have - that I definitely didn't have - of what psychosis means, or what a psychotic breakdown is, especially when it's described as an episode.

"My understanding of it at the time was of this event, something that would happen in the moment and might be described as crisis, that may lead to hospital admission."

Elias said he did not hear about the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia until October 2023, despite the inquiry hearing that his brother was diagnosed in 2020.

"At the time there was a sense of almost relief, of finally knowing what it is we've been dealing with all this time," he added.

Image source, Google

Asked if he had any contact with medical professionals, or if he was contacted about the documentation he pulled together on his interactions with his brother, Elias said he was not.

"I thought that the document was lost in the ether. I spent all that time doing it and it just wasn't useful at all," he said.

He told the inquiry he spent about three days putting the document together.

Elias also said if it was not for the coronavirus pandemic and the associated lockdown restrictions, he would have gone to Nottingham to see his brother.

On 22 May 2020, the inquiry heard Calocane called for an ambulance, saying he was struggling with chest pains.

It was recorded by the ambulance service that Calocane presented as though he was under the influence of drugs, or that his presentation was due to "acute mental health".

Counsel to the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, asked: "Were you ever aware of him taking drugs?"

Elias replied: "No, no not at all. He was fairly anti-substance. No drugs, no alcohol."

Elias told the inquiry he had a call from his mother Celeste to say that his brother had been arrested in May 2020.

He told the inquiry: "Mum called saying that Valdo was in police custody, and that there were concerns about his mental health."

The family then drove to Nottingham to see him. He was studying at the University of Nottingham at the time.

"That week building up to the first admission was a bit of a blur," said Elias. "It was a bit of a daze trying to figure out what was going on.

"We definitely didn't know of any sort of mental health problems in the past."

He said his brother had been "a bit of a night owl" as a child and teenager but Elias, who had shared a bedroom with him, was not aware of any issues.

Rachel Langdale KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Elias: "When this document was furnished to Dr Seedat, who was treating him, did you consider it might help?"

Elias said: "I was hoping it would. That was the whole point of putting it together."

Elias said he started writing the notes before Calocane's first admission to hospital.

He said: "I didn’t really know what else to do, so I just started taking notes."

Elias added there was no concern about the document being shared with other doctors.

"That was the idea. We wanted to know what was going on, he wanted a diagnosis," he said.

Elias told the inquiry that in a phone call from Valdo Calocane on 21 May 2020, his brother sounded "on edge".

He said he was becoming paranoid about his safety, adding Calocane repeatedly asked him if he was OK.

"I think there was another phone call earlier on, where he had more explicitly asked if I was OK or if someone had come to get me," he said.

Messages from Calocane to Elias that said "thinking about red rum not 120 minutes ago", and "I didn't work myself into this state of mind", are read to the inquiry.

Elias said he did not know what "red rum" - murder backwards - meant, and assumed it was about suicidal thoughts they had discussed.

He told the inquiry: "I definitely didn't associate it with murder. It would have been pretty out of character, this was the Valdo who had never been violent to anything or anyone.

"The whole conversation was in the context of wanting to take his own life and praying and ending up with a different outlook on things."

Valdo Calocane told his brother in a message that he had a dream and "when I woke up, someone in the other apartment was telling my dream to other people".

The dream had been about a confrontation with a security guard, the inquiry was told.

Calocane said he had been monitored "for weeks", and things had "got weird" after he began crying over a Bible.

Elias said he was concerned about this, and added: "I think in this moment he would have been quite psychotic.

"It's similar to the whole theme of being watched or someone out to get him."

Valdo Calocane, the inquiry heard, continued to message Elias about voices he was hearing and concerns people were monitoring him throughout May 2020.

On 20 May, the inquiry was told Calocane called Elias to say he had voices in his head. But he then said: "Sorry it's not that serious, I'm being silly."

Asked if he thought Calocane was embarrassed, Elias said Calocane did not like people to worry.

"He's always concerned that he's worrying people and not wanting to worry people," Elias said.

Valdo Calocane told his brother in messages "the impossible is happening", and that "something extraordinary is happening or I'm losing my mind".

Elias said he was “worried” and "trying to figure out what is happening".

He told the inquiry: "At that point I had this idea that he was losing his mind.

"When someone is going through a hard time, the approach I take is of 'I'm here if you feel it would be helpful to talk about it'."

Calocane said he was hearing voices, and offered to call Elias to explain what they were saying - but then decided not to.

Elias suggested that his brother should move back in with the family.

"It was Covid," said Elias. "And also because he had expressed feeling unsafe or like there was something out to get him."

Elias is continuing to be questioned about a series of messages between him and his brother.

In one message, Valdo Calocane - who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020 - said: "Because I think they're watching I know that I can break their heads with my hands, give me a reason to be mocked."

Counsel to the inquiry Rachel Langdale KC said: "What do you think he was saying there?"

Elias said: "I think he thought he was being watched and he didn't like it. I guess the fact that he was in such a vulnerable position in front of people, he thought they were sort of out to get him."

Elias said he thought his brother was feeling "unsafe" and "under threat".

Asked if he was concerned about his brother's language, Elias said: "Yeah, I think I was concerned.

"I can't remember exactly how I took that at the time. I remember the general sense of him of feeling like there was something out to get him."

Elias said after talking about his "darkest thoughts possible", messages from his brother then changed in tone.

He said he used a "religious context" of "asking God or praying" for his pain to be taken away.

Elias said his brother then described waking up and feeling "the greatest peace he had ever felt".

He said: "This was what he described as an incredibly profound thing, and he wanted to understand that experience."

Emily Williamson
BBC News

The hearing room is packed with press, lawyers and the bereaved families, who are listening to Elias Calocane give evidence.

Darren Coates - the eldest son of Ian Coates - who was fatally stabbed by Valdo Calacone, is shaking his head as Elias describes his brother as being "a very calm, peaceful person".

In messages from Valdo Calocane to his brother Elias - already shown to the inquiry - Calocane told Elias about dark thoughts he was having.

"I thought he was talking about how he wanted to kill himself the night before he sent me the 'I love you' message," Elias said.

In those messages, Calocane - who is being referred to throughout the inquiry as VC - told Elias he wanted to "hurt permanently".

"I guess it's difficult for people to read these now without the context of what happened, but you know at this point, VC had never been violent at all, to anyone.

"He was a very calm and peaceful person as far as I can remember," he said.

The pair also discussed faith in that chain of messages, the inquiry heard. Elias said Calocane had grown up as a Christian - but then became non-Christian - while Elias said he continued to be a Christian.

Elias is talking about trying to talk rationally to Valdo Calocane about his thoughts of technology being able to see the things he was looking at.

He told the inquiry: "I was trying to come at it from a logical perspective, trying to convince him that these things were unlikely to even exist or if they existed, it would be quite advanced technology reserved for national security agencies and stuff like that."

Elias said he was aware his brother had confronted people about his concerns that they were monitoring him.

"I didn't get the sense that it was done in a negative way, at the time, in the way he explained it", he added.