Carmen Campbell never went too far inside the "little dark room in the basement" where her son Richard Edwin was staying on his own.
He had become more paranoid, and would stutter and constantly look around as if someone was following him, she said.
When she'd go to his apartment on Spadina Road near Kendal Avenue, she preferred they meet outside, Campbell testified Thursday at Edwin's trial, where he has admitted to shooting two men in random and unprovoked killings in downtown Toronto in 2022, but is claiming he's not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
"I was a little scared to be there by myself because he was acting so paranoid and I had heard a child had attacked a mother in Scarborough and killed the mother some time ago," Campbell testified.
"So in the back of my mind I was a bit scared to go in."
Edwin fatally shot 21-year-old international student Kartik Vasudev in the back on April 7, 2022, outside Sherbourne station as Vasudev walked to work; two days later, he shot and killed 35-year-old Elijah Mahepath on the sidewalk in the Dundas Street and Sherbourne Street area. Edwin didn't know either of his victims and there had been no prior interaction between them before they were killed.
The killings and Edwin's movements before and after the incidents were caught on surveillance footage.
When he was arrested, police found multiple firearms in the Spadina Road apartment, most of them legally owned. Campbell recalled Edwin had asked her just before the COVID-19 pandemic for her help with an application for a firearm licence.
"I said 'What do you need that for? I'm not going to fill anything out,'" she said under questioning by Edwin's lawyer, Kaitlyn Mathews. She said they never discussed the matter further.
Campbell conceded to having sporadic contact with her son in his adult years: Crown attorney Sandra Duffey suggested during cross-examination that Edwin told the defence's psychiatrist he had been "preoccupied" by white supremacists and problems relating to anti-Black racism, but Campbell said she didn't know that. She also didn't know he was a regular cannabis user until around 2015, something else he had told the psychiatrist.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
"What?" Campbell said Thursday in a surprised tone. "I've never heard that before."
The 43-year-old Edwin watched intently from the prisoner's box, with his mouth open, as his mother recounted for the court how she noticed some changes in her son's behaviour when he was in his 20s. He had become "very nervous, agitated," said Campbell, who worked in the city shelter system with people who had mental health issues.
Around 2010, Edwin told his mother he had been hearing voices and that he'd called the police. She took him to someone she identified as "not only a medical doctor but he could see in the spirit if someone had spiritual issues." The doctor gave Edwin a prescription that Campbell believes was for antipsychotic medication, but which Edwin never filled out. She also took Edwin to a naturopathic doctor "because he was very thin and looked sick," and the naturopath gave him some herbs.
She said she later found out that he'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia by a doctor in Ottawa.
Campbell learned at some point that Edwin was making some money by selling "newsletters or stuff like that on the street," and that he'd also created his own newspaper and would solicit donations for it. And she recalled an instance where he had come to visit her at her Toronto apartment and wanted to go out on her balcony.
"I was very scared because in my mind I'm thinking 'What if he goes out there and jumps over or something?'" she testified. "I just pray that he comes in fast. But there was no incident."
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Ultimately, Campbell never dug too deep into her son's behavioural changes.
"I had a fear that maybe if I pry, he would get angry at me," she said.
The families of Edwin's victims were also listening closely to Campbell's testimony Thursday, including Vasudev's parents who travelled from India, and members of Mahepath's family who spoke publicly about him for the first time.
"Elijah was one of the greatest guys you could find and very intelligent ... He was always studying, at school they were all impressed with him," his aunt, Monica Gonsalves, told reporters Thursday.
Mahepath had come from Trinidad and Tobago to live with Gonsalves at the age of 14 along with his siblings.
"Elijah went shopping and was going home to his apartment and somebody just shot him in the back," said Gonsalves, who doesn't believe that Edwin is not criminally responsible. "I hope the court considers all the evidence and justice will prevail."
Vasudev's family described him in 2022 as a polite, sensitive and very loyal child, who was fulfilling his dream of coming to Canada to study business management.
Psychiatrists for the defence and Crown who assessed Edwin are expected to testify in the coming weeks. If Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly finds Edwin not criminally responsible, he will be detained in hospital; if she convicts him of murder, he'll be sentenced to life in prison.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Psychologist Stephanie Penney, who met with Edwin earlier this year, testified Wednesday that Edwin had reported not taking his medication for many years, but that he also said he wasn't experiencing any symptoms, which Penney said would be "atypical" if true.
"There is reason to think that that probably wasn't the case for Mr. Edwin, that he was in fact not symptom-free for those years," Penney said.
"Due to Mr. Edwin leading quite a socially-isolated lifestyle, it's my opinion that he more likely than not was symptomatic, but was not coming to the attention of mental health professionals for a number of years."