Donatello’s and Pinocchio‘s were two of Sue Addis’s eateries that were well-known in the Brighton neighbourhood.
After getting worried about her own grandson’s cannabis usage, a restaurant owner was fatally stabbed in the bathtub by him, according to testimony given in court.
Sue Addis, owner of Donatello’s Italian in Brighton, was discovered dead in her blood-spattered bathtub at her Cedar Gardens residence in Withdean.
According to evidence presented at Lewes Crown Court, the 69-year-old was stabbed at least 17 times in the chest and neck.
Her grandson, Pietro Addis, who was 17 at the time of the brutal attack in January 2021, is accused of her murder.
The teenager had been living with Ms Addis for a little more than a week after he left his dad’s home due to ‘worrying behaviour’.
The court heard he had been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication for the condition.
As well as taking the prescription, Addis had started smoking cannabis and taking anti-depressants.
He began skipping college and failed to turn up for work at the family restaurant.
The jury was told he was regularly smoking one or two cannabis joints an evening, three or four times a week.
Ms Addis had confided in friends, Sue Eastman and Denise Taylor, that she was increasingly concerned about her grandson’s cannabis use.
She also wrote to Dr Daphne Keen, the psychologist who diagnosed his ADHD in 2018, that he was continually smoking ‘weed’, which when combined with drugs had made him listless and slow.
She told her: ‘He is suffering paranoia and we are all getting annoyed with him rather than helping.
‘He still says he can’t do anything without the Elvanse [his ADHD drug] but with the weed as well he has become impossible to reason with.
‘He wants to sit in his room all day and it is an effort to get him to do anything.’
Addis’ friends also noticed a huge change in him in the months leading up to the killing.
George Cameron described him to police as ‘negative and despondent’ and ‘quite paranoid’.
Rossano Scamardella QC, prosecuting, said that on the day of her death Ms Addis returned from working at Donatello’s around 4pm, before researching online for treatment for her grandson.
‘She was researching “the Priory, Ticehurst”, which is a private clinic/hospital for addiction and mental health treatment,’ he told the court.
‘She also searched “Brighton to Ticehurst by car” presumably to see how far away it was.
‘Police enquiries of the Priory indicate that no enquiry was in fact received from Ms Addis, but it seems as though she was considering in-patient treatment for her grandson at a specialist centre.’
He continued: ‘What then followed in the lead-up to her death is unclear. Only the two of them were at the house and nobody other than Ms Addis and Addis were witness to the events immediately before he stabbed her to death as she lay in the bath.’
Addis, now 19, admits killing his grandmother but denies her murder.
Mr Scamardella said: ‘His case is that he was suffering from paranoid psychosis at the time, diminishing his responsibility for the killing and he has pleaded guilty to manslaughter to reflect that position.
‘It is the Crown’s case he suffered no such psychosis at the time of the killing, and he in fact bears complete responsibility for the murder of his grandmother.
‘The issue in this case is whether, at the time Pietro killed his grandmother, he was suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning that arises from a recognised medical condition and it substantially impaired his ability to understand the nature of his conduct and/or form a rational judgment and/or exercise self-control and that explains his act of killing his grandmother.’
The trial continues.