A California woman who stabbed her boyfriend 100 times, killing him, before attacking herself and her dog, received just 100 hours of community service.
Bryn Spejcher, 32, received a surprisingly light sentence after psychiatrists ruled the tragedy was “100 per cent” caused by cannabis-induced psychosis, which he suffered after taking two puffs from the victim’s pipe.
The judge ruled that Spejcher “experienced a psychotic break from reality” and “had no control over his actions” when he killed Chad O’Melia, then 26, on Memorial Day weekend 2018.
He will spend the 100 hours educating others about marijuana-induced psychosis, but has vowed to spend the rest of his life debunking the myth that cannabis is harmless.
O’Melia’s family cried when the sentence was read in Ventura Superior Court, and the victim’s father warned that it gave “everyone who smokes marijuana in this state a license to kill.”
Bryn Spejcher, 32, hides her face as she enters court today, where she received just 100 hours of community service.
Chicago audiologist Bryn Spejcher underwent emergency surgery after stabbing herself in the face and neck during a marijuana-induced coma.
Spejcher, an audiologist originally from Chicago but living in Thousand Oaks, California, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in December 2023, after a dramatic and heartbreaking trial.
At the time, Spejcher, who is partially deaf, described how she had puffed on a pipe but “didn’t want to smoke anymore.”
She said she felt ‘pressured’ by O’Melia, who was a regular smoker and whom she had been dating for a month.
Within minutes of inhaling the powerful cannabis vapor for the second time, Spejcher began “hearing and seeing things that weren’t there,” and believing she was dead and had to stab O’Melia to get back. to the life.
Some of the country’s leading forensic psychiatrists concluded that this experience was “100 percent” consistent with previous accounts of cannabis-induced psychosis.
“We know, quite conclusively, that marijuana can cause psychiatric illness,” Dr. Timothy Fong, faculty director of the Cannabis Research Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles and a clinical psychiatrist, told DailyMail.com.
Sentencing today, Judge Worley said: “The task [of sentencing] It’s made even harder knowing that the decision will affect good people.’
But he added that he does not believe further incarceration is necessary.
In his final speech, Spejcher said: “I wish I could go back in time and prevent this tragedy from happening.”
‘I wish I had known more about the dangers of marijuana. If he had known. He never would have smoked it that night or anything.
He promised to dedicate his life to sharing information about marijuana and its harms.
Spejcher is said to have cried during the first half of his three-hour testimony.
Caught in the crossfire was Spejcher’s beloved husky Arya, who suffered multiple stab wounds but survived, only to be hit by a car and killed months later.
Spejcher trained as an audiologist to help hearing-impaired children like her; she was born partially deaf
On the night in question, the young woman arrived at O’Melia’s Thousand Oaks condominium around 10:30 p.m. after he invited her over.
The couple had met at a local dog park about a month earlier and had been dating for a few weeks, according to court documents.
An hour and a half after the meeting, the couple went to O’Melia’s yard, where he was preparing and smoking cannabis with a bong, a device that filters smoke with water, allowing the user to inhale more without coughing.
Chad O’Melia, a trainee accountant, was stabbed 108 times. He was said to be a “regular” marijuana user.
Spejcher testified that she asked him for a puff of the pipe. He prepared it for her and she inhaled. All she felt, he told the court, was “burning and coughing.”
About 15 minutes later, when the effects didn’t take effect, O’Melia added more cannabis to the device, generating more smoke and, according to Spejcher, said, “sort of like, let’s make this more intense for you… or more fucked up.” .
In her testimony, Spejcher stated that she did not want to smoke anymore but that she felt pressured.
“He got up from his chair and turned the pipe toward my face, shoved it in my face and was pressing down on me, ‘Hurry up, hurry up, you have to inhale,’” he said, according to testimony reported by the Ventura County Star.
‘It all happened so fast. I felt like I couldn’t say no and inhaled the bong.
Immediately after the second blow, he began to feel sick and ran to the bathroom to vomit, before lying down on the sofa. She later described the onset of a series of disturbing psychiatric symptoms.
Spejcher described seeing and hearing “things that weren’t there,” “feeling like I was a corpse,” and seeing his corpse “from above.”
His hands, with which he grabbed the bread knife that penetrated O’Melia’s abdomen, he saw as foreign ‘like in a movie’.
‘…and then it turned black.’
That’s when she continued stabbing O’Melia, followed by her beloved dog Arya, and then herself in the neck. She only stopped when the police arrived at the scene and hit her nine times with a baton.
During the vicious attack, Spejcher recalled hearing voices saying things like, “keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.”
She claims to remember nothing beyond this point, until she woke up in hospital after having surgery to repair catastrophic stab wounds to her face and neck, several hours later.
Dr Kris Mohandie, forensic psychiatrist and expert witness, told the jury: “[Spejcher’s] In my opinion, the behavior of psychosis is well documented.
“The nature of it, the spontaneous things he said… were consistent with the delirium and the hallucinations and command voices that he claimed to have heard later.”
He added that his cannabis use caused him “delusions and hallucinations” and that he had “lost touch” with reality.
Dr Mohandie warned against widespread legalization of this psychoactive drug.
“It’s yet another drug that people now think is safe because it’s legal and now more people are trying it. [But] It is more powerful than ever. And it’s problematic,” said Dr. Mohandie, who has testified in 80 previous cases, including several involving marijuana.
Spejcher is said to have only been high on drugs a handful of times in her life and claimed to have felt “pressured” to take a second drag on her pipe on the night of the attack.
“So people say, ‘It’s just marijuana,’ and they try to make it seem insignificant and how that could happen.
‘Well, that doesn’t really fit with my professional experience.
A major review of hospitalizations in Canada in the years since legalization, published in October, found a 40 per cent increase in admissions for cannabis-induced psychosis related to the recent “marketing” of the drug.
The authors warned of the harms of the “rapid expansion” of the cannabis market.
Other research has shown that regularly smoking cannabis can increase the risk of developing psychosis five-fold.
Studies have long shown that cannabis products containing high-potency THC (the psychoactive chemical in cannabis that produces the “drug”) can cause serious mental health problems, such as psychosis and schizophrenia.
Experts believe the substance causes an imbalance in brain hormones, including dopamine, a feel-good chemical, triggering mental illness.
Although the risks are thought to primarily affect regular users who have been exposed to the drug for many years, doctors are increasingly seeing mental illness in non-regular use.
This is believed to be due to the increasing level of THC in marijuana products available to purchase today, which can be up to 10 times the amount naturally produced in the plant.
Dr. Kris Mohandie, a forensic psychiatrist and expert witness in the Spejcher trial, warned in his testimony that “people with no history of violence can use cannabis, even during a session, and then proceed to commit acts of physical violence against themselves. others’.