Fredericton shooter's mother asked him to get help as he stockpiled food for Armageddon

For months, Shirley Raymond begged her son to see a doctor, to get help because he was sick. She thought of calling the Fredericton police but knew there wasn't much they could do to force him to get treatment

Matthew Raymond, now on trial on four counts of first-degree murder, refused to talk to a doctor and denied being sick.

In August 2018 he shot and killed four people from the storage room window of his apartment.

Shirley Raymond testified Monday in the seventh week of his trial.

She said her son began changing in 2017. In their shared home, he paced for hours and ranted about conspiracy theories, demons, faked mass shootings and fake news. In their basement, he stockpiled canned food and jugs of water for what he thought was an imminent Armageddon.

He told his mother she was the one who was sick because she was not seeing what he was seeing.

The conflict came to a head and Raymond moved into 237 Brookside Dr. in Fredericton in May 2018. On Aug. 10, he shot and killed Donnie Robichaud and Bobbie Lee Wright from his apartment, then city police constables Sara Burns and Robb Costello when they responded to calls of shots fired.

Raymond has pleaded not guilty, and his defence team is arguing he was not criminally responsible for the shooting on account of mental illness.

Shirley Raymond said the last time she saw her son was a week or 10 days before the shooting. Raymond had come for a visit and was upset with his bank. He was having trouble with the password, and the bank told him he needed a new phone.

"I said 'Well, I can't help you anymore with your problems,'" Shirley Raymond said.

She said it was a hot and humid summer, she wasn't sleeping well and she was "exhausted."

"I said I'll give you the money to go up the hill and get a new phone. He said 'Well, that's fine. I won't bother you with my problems. I'm never coming back.'"

The next time she saw her son was in the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital after Raymond was shot in the stomach and arrested.

"I thought he would come around after a few days because he never held a grudge," she said through tears.

She said as she tried to get him help, she knew there wasn't much she could do to force a 48-year-old man to get mental-health help, especially since he wasn't threatening her, so police couldn't do anything either. She said during his rants, he never spoke about doing violent things.

She got emotional as she spoke about the morning of Aug. 10, 2018.

"The morning this happened, I saw it on the news. I called him … I wanted to warn him to stay in the apartment. It never entered my mind what was happening," she said through tears.

Matthew Raymond wiped his own tears in the prisoner's box as his mother spoke.

Shirley Raymond said it never entered her mind that her son would shoot and kill four people.

After the court was adjourned for lunch, Raymond asked if he could speak to his mother. She approached the prisoner's box with her mask still on. Raymond asked her to pull it down, then reached for her left hand with both of his. He clutched her hand, put his head down, and said "I'm sorry" repeatedly. Shirley Raymond nodded, and said once, "It's OK."

Raymond spoke to her for a minute, crying and talking quickly and quietly. His mother nodded but didn't say much, then left the courtroom.

Things 'got worse' in jail

Shirley Raymond testified she visited Raymond in custody about four times. His paranoid state was not getting any better.

"Things got worse," she said.

"He was very difficult to talk to. He didn't make sense a lot of the time. He would talk about people that I should contact at the Superstore where he had previously worked … He wouldn't give the names, he gave me an initial."

She spoke to him on the phone probably every day, she said, and she took diligent notes for the defence team of what he was saying.

She said he had given her a letter with a plan for "building a cast-iron stove, a very big one."

She was shown the plan in court. Scrawled on a piece of paper in black pen was a diagram of that stove, with instructions to give it to a relative to work on. She said the plan is for the stove to be "kept quiet and eventually patented."

She decided to give it to Raymond's lawyer at the time, Alison Menard.

"This drawing and instructions was to me not normal," she said. She was hoping this would help Menard understand her son's state of mind.

Once Raymond found this out, he said he didn't trust his mother anymore. He later fired his lawyer and rehired Nathan Gorham. An application was made for a fitness hearing, where Raymond was found unfit to stand trial and medicated against his will.

Psychiatric testimony

Dr. Scott Woodside finished his testimony Monday morning.

Woodside testified Friday he initially thought it's "possible" Raymond was not criminally responsible for the killing of two police constables and two civilians. He did not have enough information from Raymond about his state of mind from that morning, so he couldn't give a conclusive opinion.

However, Woodside said Monday he reviewed the report from a psychiatrist who did know what was going though Raymond's mind that morning. After reviewing that report, Woodside said if the jury chooses to believe Raymond's account of that morning, he would support a finding of not criminally responsible.

The Crown and defence have agreed Raymond had a mental illness at the time of the shooting. 

The agreement means to get a verdict of not guilty, the defence must prove to the jury, on a balance of probabilities, that Raymond's mental illness either stopped him from knowing the nature and consequences of his actions or knowing what he was doing was wrong.

Woodside said there is enough evidence to show Raymond had a delusional disorder, and he was concerned about people in the building coming to "harm him," and was hearing thumping on the walls. 

On cross-examination, Woodside testified Raymond told him the people who were shot were not people he'd previously been concerned about conspiring against him or coming into his apartment.

"He did tell me there was no prior connection to those individuals," Woodside said.

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