• Advisory: This story has graphic descriptions of a killing.
A 30-year-old man on trial for killing his mother was unable to recognize the “wrongfulness” of his actions due to schizophrenia-driven psychosis, a forensic psychiatrist testified Wednesday.
Ryan Elder has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of his mother, Raymonde Elder, whose body was found in her Langford home by police conducting a wellness check on New Year’s Eve in 2021.
The court has heard Ryan Elder gave a detailed statement to police after his mother’s death, explaining how he stabbed, strangled and punched his mother in what he described as both self-defence and a “mercy killing.”
Dr. Andrew Kolchak testified that he interviewed Elder in custody in 2024 and reviewed his statements to police, statements by family members, text messages and a police report.
He concluded that Elder was not able to accurately assess his environment at the time of his mother’s death due to an active psychotic illness.
In Kolchak’s report, portions of which were read in court, Elder described believing his mother had been replaced by someone who looked like her in the time leading up to her death.
“I don’t know if it’s actually her. On the day, she was very mouthy and almost afraid that her being alive was not good. I don’t know if she went through that much abuse, but whoever I was having a fight with … isn’t the same person,” defence lawyer Schuyler Roy read from the report.
Family and close friends sobbed and held each other while Roy read the graphic account Elder gave to Kolchak of fighting with someone he believed to be a substitute for his mother.
Elder recalled returning from a family dinner after receiving Christmas presents from his mother and having nothing for her in return.
“All of a sudden, she’s screaming at me and blocking and I got smoked on the side of the head. I smoked her back. I hit something that didn’t feel like teeth. I found out she had a set of scissors sitting in her mouth, pointing at me.”
The scissors “went into my bloodstream,” and he began to feel like he would pass out, thinking he had been poisoned.
“He perceived his mother as somebody else attacking him, and also perceives that the attacker is using scissors which are kept in the attacker’s mouth, which is a highly unlikely scenario,” Kolchak said.
In his account to Kolchak, Elder described struggling with his mother, trying to make her pass out because he feared she was trying to hurt him with scissors.
“She was trying to pull my eyeball out like she was practising this her whole life. I rotated her arm and heard crunching. I squeezed, but she was not passing out,” he said to Kolchak.
He later acknowledged to Kolchak he knew he had killed someone, but he didn’t know if it was real or “if it was right or not.”
“He clearly said that he felt guilty. He wasn’t exactly sure if his actions were 100 per cent.
He thought they were right, but he was not convinced,” Kolchak testified.
Elder’s father and stepsister previously testified Ryan was a normal, bright, happy kid until his early 20s, when he began acting erratically, showering infrequently and talking to himself or to people who weren’t there.
The trial continues today with testimony from Kolchak.
