Sister: Mental health played role in stabbing death
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Patricia Main spoke with Cynthia Marek on Saturday to wish her sister happy 65th birthday.
The 72-year-old St. Johns native had no idea it would be the last time she spoke to her sister – “the baby of the family.”
If you, or someone you know, is struggling with mental health concerns, including thoughts of self harm, please call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Lansing Police say Marek’s son, Brandon Labrie, 42, fatally stabbed his mother Thursday evening in the Bruce Ave. home they shared. Marek died at the hospital. Labrie had “life-threatening” injuries as well, Main says, but underwent “life-saving surgeries last night” in the hospital.
Marek was a preschool teacher who was planning to retire in the fall, Main says of her sister. She was an animal lover and loved kids.
“She loved her plants, you know, in her gardening,” she tells 6 News. “There’s flowers all over the place, and she even takes care of her little some stray kittens. Cats let them go in the shed.”
Marek was the youngest of four children and grew up in St. Johns. In her final year of high school, Marek became involved with the man who fathered Brandon. But the man was not in young Brandon’s life until after he had graduated from high school.
To make ends meet, Marek worked in the healthcare industry as a home health aide for people with disabilities and those in hospice.
“But then the toll just got to her,” she says of her sister.
While her sister was religious, she didn’t participate in organized religion or attend a specific church.
“Cindy and Brandon would pray together,” she says.
“She decided to go into teaching, you know, she liked kids,” Main says. “So, that’s when she decided to, you know, go to LCC and she got her certificate and she always was proud of herself when she’d get recertified, you know, kind of thing because school did not come easy to her. So, this was a great accomplishment for her.”
For over a decade, Marek has worked in several local preschools teaching. She was also taking care of her son, who suffered an injury to his head in Florida, Main says.
That injury led to chronic pain and seizures that would land mother and son a local emergency room on a monthly basis. Labrie’s mental health also suffered as the pain and seizures continued and modern medicine failed to find solutions.
While Main didn’t spend a lot of time around Labrie in the last year, she says her sister had noted a change in him. He’d grown frustrated with the lack of medical solutions to his pain and seizures.
About five weeks ago, the frustration led Labrie to attempt suicide.
“He had just come to the point in his life where he’s saying, ‘enough,’” Main says of her nephew. “Cindy couldn’t let it…She couldn’t walk away. It was her son.”
Labrie was hospitalized for a short period of time after the attempt, but Main says she and her sister thought he would have been referred to a facility to “make sure he was alright.”
He wasn’t. He was discharged from the hospital and returned to the Bruce Ave. home with his mom.
That she says is part of the mental health system’s failure. It’s not robust enough to address mental health concerns and crises.
Main says she is not sharing the situation as an excuse for Brandon’s alleged actions.
If he is guilty of killing his mother, Main says, “he should not see the light of day. Definitely not.”
She fears Labrie “will succeed in what he started five weeks ago” with his suicide attempt.
“He loved his mom a lot,” she says of her nephew.
“I firmly believe that whatever transpired it was because of his mental health,” she says. “It wasn’t – I don’t think it was – malicious or anything of that nature.”
She says her sister will be missed – from making clothing for Barbie dolls, complete with matching purses, to her love of cats and tropical fish to her kindness.
“It’s just inconceivable that, you know…” she struggle for the words. “the world is totally crumbled and it’s gone, you know?”
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