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The woman charged with manslaughter in the 2021 death of her mother told police that they were “strangling each other full-throttle,” the jury heard Friday as the Crown concluded its case.
In testimony by London police Det. Blair Gould on Friday, the jury heard Barbara Cabala told police about the chaotic, fatal altercation at her mother’s Wilkins Street townhome on July 7, 2021.
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“I’m not going to lie about that, we were fighting with each other,” Cabala told police in an early morning interview on July 8, 2021, after she was released from hospital.
Cabala said near the end of the interview they were “strangling each other full-throttle” and “pushing each other’s faces,” making gestures of the actions to Gould.
“That’s why I’m sore in every part of my body,” Cabala said in her police interview.
“I was trying to defend myself. . . . My hands are ripped up because I was trying to stop her,” Cabala told police, adding that she was “grabbing things out of her (mother’s) hand that she was smashing me with.”
Cabala has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the July 2021 death of her mother, Elzbieta Cabala, 59.
During cross-examination of Gould by defence lawyer Geoff Snow, Gould admitted he did not ask Cabala follow-up questions in the interview after her comment that she and her mother were strangling each other.
Gould admitted at the time of the police interview that officers believed the 59-year-old’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. During cross-examination, he admitted several questions to Cabala stemmed from that assumption.
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The jury already has heard that Cabala’s mother died from external neck compression and that the pressure exerted on the 59-year-old’s larynx was enough to fracture her airway.
Gould testified that Cabala told police that her relationship with her mother was difficult, with a long history of conflict.
“She’s been on me all my life,” Cabala told Gould in the interview.
When Gould responded by saying that there was only so much a person could take, Cabala said: “It’s not a reason to do anything to her. . . . She’s never going to change, that’s just the way she was.”
Crown witness Jason Lundy, a London firefighter, testified Friday that he arrived at the townhome at 392 Wilkins St. for reports of a woman who was assaulted.
He saw a woman covered in blood on the floor of the front hallway and knelt to check if she was breathing.
The woman was Cabala. Lundy testified he was then directed to the rear of the home where London police were performing chest compressions on Cabala’s mother, who was without vital signs.
At the back of the home, Lundy said he saw a chaotic scene with a toppled flower stand, potting soil everywhere and blood smears on the wall. He testified that firefighters moved the 59-year-old about four feet into the centre of the room and did not disturb anything else in the home.
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