The teenage grandson of Brighton restaurant boss Sue Addis wept in the dock as a jury heard a recording of the 999 call that he made after he stabbed her to death.
Pietro Addis, 19, looked down and sobbed silently in the dock at Lewes Crown Court, where he is on trial for his grandmother’s murder, as the 999 call and body-worn video footage was played to the court.
Addis, of Radinden Manor Road, Hove, stabbed his 69-year-old grandmother to death as she was taking a bath at her home in Cedars Gardens, Brighton.
He denies murder but has admitted manslaughter, claiming diminished responsibility because of paranoid psychosis.
The jury heard a recording of Addis saying: “I’m calling to turn myself in … There’s been a murder.”
Asked who had been murdered, he replied: “My grandma.”
Asked how it had happened, he said: “No comment.”
The call handler asked: “When you say your Nan’s dead, how certain are you of that?”
Addis replied: “One hundred per cent.”
Rossano Scamardello, prosecuting, told the jury that Addis’s family, including his grandmother, were “troubled by Pietro’s use of cannabis”.
Mr Scamardello said that they had also been concerned about Addis’s use of Elvanse – “an amphetamine-based medication” prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
He said: “(Addis) was later to tell the psychiatrists that he relied on the ADHD medication to perform even routine daily functions.”
Addis also said that he had not had his medication for about three weeks at the time of his grandmother’s death because it had run out.
Mr Scamardello said: “Just prior to Christmas in 2020, Mrs Addis told (her friend) Sue Eastman that Pietro’s mood swings were such that she thought he ought to go back on to his medication for ADHD.
“In late December, with Pietro’s behaviour become more worrying, matters came to a head, when shortly after Christmas he was asked to leave his father’s home and live with his grandmother, Susan Addis.
“And within a little over a week, he had killed her.”
The barrister said: “Pietro was asked to leave his home following an argument with his stepmother, witnessed by his sister, Carmen.
“Pietro had asked for the return of his ADHD medication as his father had taken it from him. When he was told that it had been flushed down the toilet, there was an argument.”
Mr Scamardello said: “It was not just the immediate family that had cause for concern. A friend of Pietro’s, George Cameron, also noticed a real change in Pietro in the six months preceding Mrs Addis’s death.
“George noticed that he had been very negative and despondent. He seemed paranoid. He understood Pietro to be using Xanax – an anti-depressant – and cannabis and he would use a high dose of Adderall which was ADHD medication.
“George last law Pietro about five days before Mrs Addis died. Pietro sold him a hoody – he was selling his clothes when he needed money.
“He said that what had happened was a shock as Pietro really liked his nan and of all his family he loved her the most.”
Mr Scamardello added that the day after Addis’s arrest, a clinical nurse specialist Michelle Hall said that he “reports that he has previously felt sad”.
She said: “He felt sad as he has been unable to go out and see his friends due to the current lockdown.”
The killing happened the day after the start of the third national coronavirus lockdown.
Mr Scamardello concluded his opening by saying: “The experts agree that he now suffers with no psychotic mental disorder.
“In the time since he killed his grandmother, Pietro Addis has been prescribed no anti-psychotic medication.
“The prosecution will contend that if he had suffered a psychotic episode of the type that led to him killing his grandmother in the frenzied way which he did, it is highly unlikely that the psychosis would resolve without medication of some description.
“As tragic and as bewildering as it may be, Pietro Addis murdered his grandmother, Susan Addis.”
The trial contiues.
Good to read this verbatim account…so sad all round