Man functioning in 'video game' as he killed Marpole couple: Lawyer
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 02:19:32 +0000
WARNING: This story contains graphic content.
A man confessed in court Tuesday that he murdered a Marpole couple with his lawyer claiming that at the time his client was functioning not in the real world but within a “fictional world” that he understood was in effect a video game.
Rocky Rambo Wei Nam Kam, 29, admitted to a judge that in a brutal and random attack he had killed Richard Jones, 68, and his wife, Dianna Mah-Jones, 64.
The Crown’s theory is that Kam had bought an axe and other items several weeks before the September 2017 slayings specifically to kill someone.
Kam initially pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder but on Tuesday, Glen Orris, his lawyer, told the judge that his client had committed the slayings. Orris said that at the time of the killings his client was suffering from a mental disorder that resulted in him thinking that he was in a video game.
“Within the game, he obviously attacked and killed (the couple),” he told the judge.
Orris said the evidence will show that over a period of time when he was living in Calgary and after he moved to Vancouver in summer 2017 Kam had isolated himself to a large extent and was spending 10-to-15 hours a day on computer gaming and reading fantasy comic books.
The defence lawyer, who is expected to call an expert witness, indicated that if it can be proven that Kam was in fact suffering from the mental disorder of a gaming addiction, then the elements of murder cannot be made out and his client might be guilty of the lesser and included offence of manslaughter.
Orris then called his client to the witness stand. The slightly built and soft-spoken accused then proceeded to calmly describe how he carried out the killings.
He said that he was out walking in the Marpole neighbourhood where the couple lived when he saw Mah-Jones get out of her vehicle and walk to her house carrying some groceries. He said he initially hid in the bushes near the house then charged to the front door to confront Mah-Jones, who tried to close the door on him. During a struggle, Kam, who was carrying a hatchet and a pocket knife that he’d purchased at a nearby Canadian Tire, dropped the weapons and put his hands around the neck of Mah-Jones, who was screaming.
Asked by Orris why he had attacked the Vancouver woman, he said: “I won’t say I remember exactly why.”
After Mah-Jones stopped struggling, he said he stood up and heard a noise in the back of the house. He said at some point he also stabbed Mah-Jones. Hiding behind some stairs, he noticed Richard Jones entering the back of the home and ran toward him and starting stabbing him with the pocket knife.
“I don’t know who he is,” Kam said in response to a question from Orris as to why he attacked the husband. “I don’t know him. But then I just stabbed him.”
He said he left Jones and went into the living room and got the hatchet and went back and used the weapon to chop Jones on the neck.
“I remember what I did but not sure why,” he said in response to another question from Orris about the reasons for his actions.
The offender said he dragged the bodies of the two victims into the kitchen where he tied a leg of each victim to a chair with twine he’d also bought at the Canadian Tire. Then he walked around the house before moving the two bodies to the bathroom, he told the judge.
After leaving the scene in Mah-Jones’ car, he said he later realized that he had killed two people and felt scared.
The trial continues Wednesday with more testimony from Kam.