Crown prosecutors spent much of Tuesday morning cross-examining the mother of accused killer Michael Adenyi regarding the state of his mental health leading up to the random stabbing of Vanessa Ladouceur in Calgary’s Beltline three years ago.
Adenyi, 29, is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of Ladouceur, 30, in the early morning of March 18, 2022.
The accused was captured on surveillance footage stabbing the woman eight times while walking along 10th Avenue S.E. to work at a nearby fitness facility.
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The accused’s mother, Ferid Loyuk, told the court her son had a “mental sickness.”
Loyuk said she started to notice odd behaviour in 2021, including talking to himself in the shower for an hour at a time.
She said Adenyi told her he was taking the long showers to drown out voices.
Loyuk also testified her son would tell her he was seeing animal-like creatures trying to attack him that weren’t there.
“I couldn’t see anything, but it was very real for him. He’d open the window and tell him to get out of the window,” Loyuk told the jury.
The woman said she and her husband had taken Adenyi to see doctors and a psychiatrist to “try and get him help.”
Crown prosecutor Carla MacPhail questioned why she did not tell the psychiatrist about Adenyi’s odd behaviour.
Loyuk said the psychiatrist didn’t ask them directly.
MacPhail asked why she did not tell detectives on the day of Adenyi’s arrest that her son would talk to himself or was scared about hallucinations he was having.
“At no point did you tell them that he was seeing animals or beings,” said MacPhail.
Loyuk said they brought medication for detectives to give to her son but did not divulge information about his mental health at that time.
“Why would we do that? They are not professionals for that,” she responded.
MacPhail suggested the woman loved her son and wanted to help him as much as possible.
“As a parent, I love my son,” Loyuk responded. “I will always love him.”
Last week, Adenyi testified he was seeing shadows, demons and animalistic creatures leading up to the moment of the attack.
Adenyi’s defence team argues he should not be criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder.
The Crown argues Adenyi deliberately attacked Ladouceur out of rage, knew it was wrong, and waited until there were fewer vehicles passing before he tackled the victim.
Two red notebooks were also found in a backpack that Adenyi was seen on video dumping into an alley garbage bin on the day of the attack, which included lists to beat, rape and torture in addition to lists about celebrities and social media influencers.
