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MANDEL: Woman accused of manslaughter testifies she left mom on floor for days

Eva Samonas, 73, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, other charges connected to death of elderly mom

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For more than two days and two nights, Eva Samonas left her poor 96-year-old mother — who was naked and covered in her own urine and feces, something Samonas denied knowing — on the floor of their filthy, junk-filled home on Broadview Ave.

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By the time her daughter finally called 911 on Jan. 6, 2024, Visiliki Atanosouki was deathly ill: Paramedics initially couldn’t find a pulse and she had a gaping and infected open bed sore from the middle of her back to her upper legs, where the skin had worn down to the bone — a wound her daughter insisted she never noticed.

MANDEL: Woman accused of manslaughter testifies she left mom on floor for days Back to video

The frail Greek immigrant died the following day from complications from “prolonged immobility” in a woman with a blood clot to her lungs and heart disease. A pathologist also found her bedsores had been exposed to E. coli from urine and feces.

The woman entrusted with her care, her 73-year-old daughter, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessaries of life, insisting she did everything she could.

Accused says mom was ‘very stubborn’

At her judge-alone trial where Samonas is representing herself, the diminutive woman took the stand and in between sobs told Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly that her mom had fallen again on her way back from the washroom on Jan. 4, 2024, but while she tried to get her up, she refused because Atanosouki was “very stubborn” and liked to sit on the floor.

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“She was laughing and talking and singing,” Samonas told the court, as if she were describing a picnic.

She said she wedged a diaper pad under her mother and propped her head against the couch, she explained. She said she didn’t want her mom to spend the night on the floor — they usually slept together on the admittedly dirty sofa, she said — but she couldn’t go against her mom’s wishes and call for an ambulance.

“She said, ‘No, no, they’re going to kill me.’ That’s where my stepfather passed away,” she told the court.

Sought help from brother, neighbours?

The next day, Samonas said she begged her brother to come over and help, but he has a bad back and told her to call 911. “She wasn’t in distress, that’s why I didn’t.”

She also said that she asked a family friend and a neighbour; both men said they were afraid of breaking her fragile bones and also urged Samonas to call an ambulance. “I just wanted to respect what she wanted. She didn’t want to go,” she told Crown attorney Christine Jenkins.

But on Saturday morning, her mom was no longer communicating or eating, so her daughter finally made the call she should have made days before. Yet she was still downplaying her mom’s perilous situation.

“It’s not really an emergency, to be honest with you,” she told the dispatcher on Jan. 6, 2024, in an eerily calm voice. “I just want her to be checked out at Michael Garron Hospital.”

Samonas told Jenkins that she doesn’t know why she said that.

House cluttered with debris

When paramedics arrived, they testified, they could barely move in the home filled with mountains of clutter and debris. Samonas admitted the kitchen and bathrooms were filthy, there were flies in the fridge and piles of clothes in the bathtubs and dirty dishes in the washroom sink. “It looks worse in the pictures,” she insisted.

She blamed her mom: She said she was a longtime hoarder and even as a child Samonas couldn’t invite her friends inside because she was so embarrassed.

When they moved in together during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said she tried to clean the East York house, but claimed her mom hit her with a stick if she noticed something had been moved. “It was difficult staying there,” she wept.

Court heard Atanosouki was diagnosed with dementia in 2017 and also suffered from a heart condition — but hadn’t been taken to the doctor for two years before her death. “She didn’t seem like she needed a doctor,” her daughter said. “She wasn’t in any crisis or pain.”

Jenkins asked her how long it had been since she’d bathed her mother. She said she couldn’t recall.

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Samonas says she ‘assumed’ mom would get up

There were episodes of her disappearing or being lost, but Samonas agreed with the prosecutor that she never reached out to resources suggested by the doctors in 2017.

“In January 2024, you understood as your mother’s caregiver that you had a responsibility to make decisions for her, right? You understood that and those decisions included decisions that were in her best interest, right?” Jenkins demanded.

“So you should have called 911 when she went to the floor as her caregiver, correct, even though she said no?”

Samonas insisted her mom had fallen before and got up — including the previous day.

“So the plan was just to wait for her to pop back up like she’d done the day before?” the prosecutor asked.

“Well, I assumed she would,” Samonas said.

Closing submissions are expected on Friday.

mmandel@postmedia.com

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