Accused denies she attacked her mother, ‘beat her to a pulp’

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Barbara Cabala testified she still struggles to understand what triggered her mother to “attack” her in a violent struggle that left her mother dead.

“I don’t know, that’s what I was trying to process, trying to figure out. Why? Forty years of arguing back and forth, all of a sudden decide to resort to physical violence. I don’t know. I don’t know to this day,” she said.

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The Crown struggled too, given the last thing Cabala said to her mother before the fight in the Wilkins Street townhouse on July 7, 2021, was “Say that to my face.”

It was in response, Cabala said, to her mother’s cutting remark, “Now I know why (her former common-law partner) left you.”

Assistant Crown attorney James Spangenberg suggested her mother’s criticism sparked Cabala to attack, instead, as Cabala has maintained, of her 59-year-old mother Elzbieta attacking her.

“She came at me,” Cabala said Monday at her Superior Court of Justice jury trial where she has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. “I had no intention of fighting her. She just hurt my feelings and I just wanted to hurt her with words.”

Spangenberg suggested after years of criticism from her mother, Cabala took the first swing. “I’m going to suggest to you that you just lost it that night and you attacked your mother… You went at her and beat her to a pulp.”

“That is extremely wrong and untrue,” Cabala said.

Cabala’s mother was found bloodied with no vital signs after Barbara Cabala called 911. An autopsy revealed she died of external neck compression.

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The jury has seen photos of the bloody scene. A forensic pathologist has testified there were more than 55 injuries to Cabala’s mother. Cabala was injured too, complaining of dizziness and a sore head, but she was discharged from the hospital the same night after a battery of tests.

Cabala maintained both in her police statement shown to the jury and in her testimony that she was defending herself. “I’m ready to speak my truth,” she said under questioning from her defence lawyer Geoff Snow.

Cabala said she was born in Poland and moved to Canada with her parents as a refugee, first settling in Woodstock, then London at the end of her Grade 10 year.

She has a science degree from the University of Waterloo and worked in quality assurance for McCormick’s Canada until she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She had a miscarriage in 2017. Her 13-year common-law relationship ended months before she moved in with her mother a month before her death.

At the time of her mother’s death, she recently had taken a job at Canadian Tire after working at a Dollarama store. Her plan, she said, was to take two months “to get back on my feet and figure out what I was going to do next.”

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Initially, things went smoothly. But “it didn’t last very long,” Cabala said. A week after she moved in, she said her mother, who she said had undiagnosed mental health issues and suffered from panic attacks that sometimes left her not breathing, was right back to criticizing her for her relationships and work and lifestyle choices.

The morning of her mother’s death, Cabala said she had the day off and slept until 8 a.m. and “woke up feeling pretty good.” The day before, she’d gone to the beach. She made a plan to visit her former work colleagues and bring them some doughnuts.

She returned to her mother’s place, exercised and decided she wanted to watch the NHL Stanley Cup finals at the local pub. She said she knew a few people who went there to watch sports and, being single at the time, she wanted to “dress up, hoping to meet someone.”

She said she drank a couple glasses of wine and smoked some pot. It was while she was getting ready that her mother, who was “in a funk of a mood,” began to argue with her about going out, drinking and drugs. Cabala said she put on her headphones to calm herself, which made her mother more upset. She told her mother she was going out and probably would have a beer.

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That’s when the words were exchanged. Her mother “came at me and hit me across here,” she said, crying and pointing to her head and shoulder. ”It was a really hard hit.”

Her mother lunged at her “at full force,” she said, knocking her into a corner cabinet and a plant stand near the patio door, sending plants and pots flying. “I got knocked into the wall and she kept hitting me,” she said.

“I was terrified. I was hurt already. She stunned me,” Cabala said.

Cabala said she pushed her mother back and they stumbled over the dirt and broken pieces of pottery on the floor. Her mother, she said, “came back at me and continued hitting me.” They pushed and hit each other with objects. Her mother became “more angry.”

Cabala said she couldn’t get away from her mother, saying her mother was holding onto her, hitting her and “she was strangling me.”

“She literally had her hands on my throat. I did the same,” believing that was the only way to get her mother to stop, she said.

During the fight, Cabala said she was so terrified, she defecated herself and blacked out briefly. She was on her back and her mother was on top of her and they both had hands on each other’s necks. Her mother finally stopped squeezing her neck, and “I pushed her off of me.”

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Cabala said she got up “dizzy, hurt and disoriented” and wanted to get away from her mother. She searched for her phone and called 911, not just for help but in case her mother came at her again. When she made the call, her mother was still alive, she insisted, because she had seen her move her arm.

But Spangenberg suggested Cabala knew she had killed her mother and didn’t call 911 right away. There was blood outside a patio door, suggesting the fight went out to the backyard, and blood up the stairs.

He said Cabala must have watched her mother die. “The last I recall, she was still alive,” Cabala said.

“You watched her last breath leave her body,” Spangenberg said.

“I do not have any recollection of that. I pushed her over on her side and got away from her. She was still fine at that point,” she said.

The cross-examination continues Tuesday.

jsims@postmedia.com

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