Brad Southwind’s mother went to the Elliott Lake Police Department in February 2018 “after talking to my son,” she told jurors Monday during his first-degree murder trial.
Myra Southwind said she spoke to the Ontario Provincial Police after hearing what happened to Joseph Topping and realizing Brad was involved in his best friend’s death.
The 31-year-old man’s body was found in a wooded marshy area behind his apartment building on Mississauga Avenue on February 14, 2018.
He was stabbed 17 times.
The accused’s mother was the first witness called by defense lawyer Don Oracietti after the Crown closed its case last week.
Southwind, 27, has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Oracietti showed the woman a document dated June 6, 2018, which she said was “working with the police.”
Her home was “wired” to obtain video and audio recordings and get Brad to “confess.”
Meera testified that her son was treated for schizophrenia in 2018 and received an injection that was supposed to last a month but only lasted two to three weeks.
She said when she saw him in January and February, she noticed “different personalities” and the different ways he would walk and talk.
The court heard that she had given him a sage smear – “a way of praying and asking the creator to come clean.”
Brad needed it “to cleanse his home and himself. A lot of the voices he was hearing disturbed him.”
Meera said he was diagnosed in his early teens when he lived with her mother.
“He had a lot of mental health issues,” she told Oracietti, wiping tears from her eyes.
She described how she tried to help him when he was growing up, “but all they did was give him medicine.”
In 2017-2018, Brad was using over-the-counter drugs, but she indicated that she did not know what they were.
He also “liked to drink.”
Mira said she smoked weed with her son once or twice.
He once had a panic attack and “became very paranoid,” she testified, explaining that she thought he might have to go to the hospital, but “he calmed down after a while.”
The case continues today in Sault Ste. Marie’s Courthouse with Mira Southwind returns to the witness stand.
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