Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar died at the scene of the attacks
Prosecutors have accepted a plea of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility from the man who stabbed three people in Nottingham.
Students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, died after being attacked on 13 June.
Valdo Calocane denied murder but admitted manslaughter in November.
His pleas of not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter were accepted at Nottingham Crown Court.
They were accepted on the basis of diminished responsibility due to “serious” mental illness, the hearing was told.
Prosecutor Karim Khalil KC said the families of the victims had been consulted before the prosecution decided to accept the pleas entered.
Calocane, who answered to the name Adam Mendes in court, also admitted attempting to murder three pedestrians who were hit by a van on the morning of the attacks.
The 32-year-old now faces a sentencing hearing expected to last for about two days.
Image source, Nottinghamshire Police
Calocane was arrested shortly after the attacks
University of Nottingham students Mr Webber and Ms O’Malley-Kumar were fatally stabbed in Ilkeston Road just after 04:00 BST, while Mr Coates was found dead with knife injuries in Magdala Road after his van was stolen.
Pedestrians Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller were then driven at in Milton Street and Upper Parliament Street, in the city centre.
Officers stopped the van in Milton Street and Calocane was arrested.
Vigils for the victims held at the university and in Nottingham city centre were attended by thousands of people.
Mr Khalil told the court that three psychiatrists had assessed Calocane, concluding that despite suffering paranoid schizophrenia he would have understood the nature of his conduct in attacking three of his victims with a dagger described in court as “a double-edged fighting knife”.
The prosecutor said: “We have also consulted with the families of the deceased.
“We considered carefully representations made in the course of those consultations; we also considered the particular gravity and complexity of this case, including that which we submit are the grossly aggravating factors of the multiplicity of fatal and intended fatal offending.
“In these circumstances, the Crown concluded that it was appropriate to accept the pleas to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility.
“For the avoidance of any possible doubt, it is the Crown’s position that the appalling facts of this case render it to be one of the utmost seriousness.”
Calocane’s barrister Peter Joyce KC told a previous hearing the defendant “does not dispute the physical facts of the prosecution’s case” but was suffering from “extreme” mental illness at the time of the incident.
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