Barbara Cabala and the London police detective were crowded around the computer in the sparse interview room, listening to her frantic 911 call made hours earlier from her mother’s home after she said they had gotten into a violent exchange.
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Det. Blair Gould wanted her to hear it, especially after Cabala had told him moments earlier that, “I didn’t kill her. She was conscious when I called the ambulance. She was breathing and doing her thing.”
But that’s not what Cabala, 43, told the 911 dispatcher on July 7, 2021, a call that has already been played for the jury at her Superior Court trial that began last week and where she has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
“My mom attacked me and I tried to defend myself and I don’t think she is breathing right now,” she told the operator.
Cabala told Gould during the police interview she passed out during the phone call and she had no memory of the 911 operator encouraging her to start CPR. “I don’t remember talking to her about CPR. I remember telling her I couldn’t go near her,” she told Gould.
She told the officer she didn’t try to kill her mother, Elzbieta, 59, but that “I was fighting for my life.”
“She was already very, very injured when you made that call,” Gould said.
Cabala said neither of them was OK and they were “at each other’s throats and pushing back and forth” and added she didn’t know her mother had died until the officers told her.
The jury already has heard from a forensic pathologist that Cabala’s mother died from external neck compression, that among her various injuries more than 55 of them were on her neck and that the pressure exerted on it was enough to fracture her larynx.
Barbara Cabala was found on the floor near the front door of the Wilkins Street townhouse with her cellphone still connected to the 911 operator when police got there, while her mother was at the back near the patio door without vital signs.
On Thursday, the jury heard from Terry Skoretz, the attending physician in the Victoria Hospital emergency department. He agreed, while reviewing the medical record, that Barbara Cabala was brought to the hospital with a cut to her hand but no obvious head injury.
Cabala complained of dizziness, an elevated heart rate and a pain level she told the medical team was an eight out of 10 in severity. She was run through a battery of tests and given both X-rays and a CT scan. Skoretz agreed he discharged Cabala early the next morning with three regular-strength Tylenol.
Cabala was able to walk out of the hospital with a police escort.
The jury was shown most of the rest of the police interview taped at London police headquarters after her hospital discharge, which Cabala had with Gould. The jury saw the first part of the interview Jan. 10.
The part of the interview shown Thursday was more about the strained relationship Cabala had with her mother. She said, like her father, she sometimes suffered from blackouts. She said she passed out twice during the confrontation with her mother.
Cabala said her mother was controlling and critical. She claimed her mother often was stressed and she wouldn’t be surprised if she had died of a heart attack or a stroke. She said her mother “does a lot of nutty things,” was a hoarder, a gossiper, a gambler and “her mission was to save me.” She recalled being hit with a belt as a child.
“I didn’t realize how sick she was,” Cabala told Gould adding, “She’s been yelling at me and doing this stuff to me forever.”
A few weeks earlier, not long after Cabala had moved in with her mother, Cabala said she called the police after her mother hit her in the face and called her “ungrateful.” Gould reviewed the police report and told Cabala her account was accurate.
Cabala said she and her mother began to argue after her mother had criticized her for drinking – she had consumed two glasses of wine – and planning to go out that evening to a local pub. She said her mother hit her and they ended up in a wrestling match, she said, in the corner of the living room and a shelf fell. She said her mother tried to hit her with a piece of broken flower pot and the two of them struggled to the floor.
She said both of them were bleeding and there was broken pottery and dirt everywhere. She called the police partially “because I didn’t know what she’s going to do next.”
Gould asked Cabala what she thought her mother was trying to accomplish. She surmised it was to get her to move out. The criticisms made her feel “like a worthless kid, ‘Oh her mother doesn’t love her’, but mad because I’m an adult and I’m not doing anything wrong.”
But Cabala had a lot of stress of her own. She had moved in with her mother after her long-term relationship had broken up and had nowhere else to go. She had started a new job and was working minimum wage, hoping to save enough money and find an apartment. Her dog recently had died.
She told Gould she had suffered from a brain tumour about three years earlier and she had a miscarriage. Her friends, she said, referred to her mother as “nice lady but crazy lady.” She said she had never been violent with her until that evening.
‘I can’t believe she’s not here. It feels like what you’re telling me is fake,” she said to Gould.
Before the fight, Cabala said she had smoked some marijuana in the afternoon and admitted to Gould “I’ve had an issue” with alcohol and would turn to it “at weak moments.”
Gould said there was other unexplained evidence at the scene, such as blood on the patio door handle and a broken pot outside the door when Cabala didn’t mention anything about them being outside.
Her mother also had a large laceration on her head, he told her.
“I can’t tell you what she was doing. I can only tell you my side of the story,” she said.
“My mother just . . . died. How can you expect me to remember every single detail?”
Gould said to Cabala, “Sometimes we can only take so much” and he didn’t think she started the fight.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cabala said. “She’s dead and I’m under arrest.”
The trial continues on Friday.