LONDON – Police worked Wednesday to piece together details and the 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 grieving and a university city in shock.
University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar were stabbed to death on a street near student housing in a rampage that began before dawn on Tuesday.
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Police say a 31-year-old suspect then killed school caretaker Ian Coates more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away as he headed to work, stole his van and ran down a group of pedestrians. Three people were hurt, one critically, in the hit-and-run.
The attacks unfolded over about 90 minutes across a large swath of Nottingham, a university city of about 350,000 some 110 miles (175 kilometers) north of London.
Nottinghamshire Police released more details of the attacks on Wednesday, saying a man matching the suspect’s description tried to enter a care home after the two students were stabbed, but was kept out by residents.
Police subdued the suspect with a stun gun after he abandoned the van and came at them with a knife, detaining him on suspicion of murder. Police said they believe the attacker acted alone, and were working with counterterrorism officers to try to establish a motive. The attack hasn't been labeled terrorism by the authorities, and police are investigating issues including the suspect's mental health.
The BBC and other U.K. 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 and didn't have a criminal record.
U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman said that police were “working flat out to establish the full facts and provide support to everyone affected.”
“They are currently keeping an open mind as to the motives behind these attacks, but I can confirm Nottinghamshire Police are being assisted in their inquiries by counterterror police, though this does not mean that it is currently being treated as a terrorist attack," 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 graduation ball scheduled for Tuesday evening was canceled, with many students gathering instead 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, lining up under an incongruously bright summer sun to leave flowers around a large rectangular fountain. Many wept, and the parents and siblings of the two dead students clasped hands to support one another.
Sobs could he heard as the victims' fathers addressed the crowd, recalling how their children loved university life.
“The love that we have out here, I wish that we had it everywhere,” said Sanjoy Kumar, his voice breaking. “Look after 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 over the moon to have made selection to 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 field 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 “truly wonderful and beautiful young lady."
“Words cannot explain our complete and utter devastation. She will be so dearly missed. We were so incredibly proud of Grace’s achievements and what a truly lovely person she was.”
Coates' employer said he was a “beloved and respected” staff member at a Nottingham primary school.
His son, Lee Coates, said that his father was a keen soccer fan and avid fisherman who had been due to retire in four months.
“He used to take underprivileged kids fishing just to get away from crime," Lee Coates said as he left an England soccer shirt bearing the handwritten message: “Dad, love you always and forever" at the spot where his father died.
“You genuinely couldn’t find a nicer guy.”