Warning: This story contains graphic content.
A man who woke his mum in the middle of the night to tell her he was overdosing on drugs and needed her help went on to stab her 62 times as she tried to get him into a waiting ambulance, a Perth court has heard.
Callum James Cameron, 31, pleaded not guilty to the murder of his mum Carol Cameron, 63, but guilty to manslaughter on the first day of his trial in the Supreme Court of WA on Monday.
Carol Cameron, 63, died after being stabbed by her son Callum who was in a drug psychosis.
Prosecutors continued to push for a murder conviction, arguing he had premeditated intent and moments of lucidity, while Cameron’s defence claimed he had no idea or memory of what he did.
The court was told confronting details of how Carol crawled away from her son, begging for help as he repeatedly stabbed her with a vegetable knife in the back, neck, head and legs on August 10, 2020.
Cameron had been high on a cocktail of mushrooms, antidepressants and ayahuasca, a potent plant-based psychedelic, when he woke his mum and asked her for help in the early hours of the morning.
The court heard Cameron’s girlfriend had left him earlier that day and his previous experiences of taking ayahuasca had been “pleasurable”.
In Carol’s triple-zero call, played to the court on Monday, she told operators her son was not being violent but she was concerned about him.
“He meant to take the drugs but didn’t mean to take the overdose,” she said.
Attending paramedics told the court Cameron was unresponsive and looked like “the lights were on but no one was home” before they left the St James house to request police support to get him to hospital.
Before police arrived, Cameron’s behaviour escalated, and he was heard by the paramedics telling his mum to “f--- off” and leave him alone, before he grabbed a 25-centimetre kitchen knife and stabbed her repeatedly.
A paramedic who attended the scene told the court Carol yelled for help.
“We could hear the stabbing noises. We could hear her scream every time she was stabbed,” he said.
“She was crawling out. She was yelling, ‘Help me, help me’.
“He came down on to her back and continued stabbing her.”
The paramedic told the court he and his colleague made the decision not to re-enter the property to help as it was “far too dangerous”.
Instead, they activated a “code black” and armed police entered the property minutes later, where they found Cameron sitting calmly on the sofa covered in blood.
However, he struggled and had to be restrained with the use of a taser and baton when police arrested him, shortly after asking if his mum was OK and if he was in trouble.
At one point he also said: “You’re not the f---ing police”.
He was taken to Fiona Stanley Hospital, where he later said he had no recollection of the incident.
Cameron’s defence barrister told Justice Joseph McGrath, who is presiding over the trial alone due to the graphic nature of the evidence, that despite the nature of the stab wounds and the number of them, that he never intended to kill his mum.
“In his words, she was a beautiful lady,” his lawyer said.
“She was ongoing support during difficult times.”
The trial continues.
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