Jurors entered day three of deliberations Wednesday in the trial of Calgary murder suspect Alex (Aixin) Xu.
Xu, 23, is charged with second-degree murder in the June 30, 2023, slaying of his mother, Alice (Jingying) Ai.
Jurors began deliberating Xu's fate Monday afternoon after hearing final submissions from defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk and Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner as well as instructions on the law from Court of King's Bench Justice Robert Armstrong.
The 12-member jury was told they had one issue to consider, whether Xu had the necessary intent to commit murder when he bludgeoned his mother between two homes across the street from Foothills Medical Centre.
Xu had been taken to the hospital in the early morning hours of June 30, 2023, by his parents after he consumed two tabs of LSD the previous evening.
Xu testified he was experiencing a severe reaction to the consumption of the drugs and was having difficulty perceiving reality from fantasy. At one point he left the emergency room and his mother followed him across the street to nearby residences.
It was there, between two houses, that Xu took a rock and killed his mother after she grabbed him by the arm.
"I looked back at her face and it was monstrously deformed in a spiral-like pattern," he told jurors, comparing what he saw to images in a graphic Japanese horror series called Uzumaki.
"I screamed out loud … I punched where her face should be, she'd fallen over, lost her balance. I kicked her head," Xu testified.
"I picked up a nearby rock and I struck her head twice and following the second strike, there was a huge amount of blood spatter that shocked me. I dropped the rock, I'd fallen back and I simultaneously thought 'I just killed her,' and 'this could not possibly be real.'"
Xu told Fedorchuk he felt "an immense visceral fear," when he saw his mother's distorted face.
"That's what my mind perceived, like a demonic entity had just come out of nowhere and was going to eat my soul."
Fedorchuk argued that the effect of the drugs made his client incapable of forming the intent to commit murder and he should be convicted of manslaughter. But Faulkner told jurors Xu's testimony was a made-up story to mask the truth; that he was angry at his mother and killed her.
