Steven John Chokolich: Mentally ill man detained for life for shocking stabbing murder of his mum in Balga

A mentally ill man who stabbed his elderly mother to death in what WA’s top judge described used “violence of the most extreme” has been detained for life. Steven John Chokolich has been held at the Franklin Centre since his arrest for the shocking murder of his 81-year-old mother and carer, Barbara, at the front of their, Balga home in October 2016. Witnesses said they saw Mr Chokolich on the pathway outside his unit upset and babbling incoherently about his mother having killed his father. After a short while he went inside then emerged holding his mother in a headlock and carrying a large knife. He then dragged his mother onto the grassed area then retrieved the knife he had dropped along the way and plunged it into her chest and neck while terrified neighbours watched on saying: “I am going to cut your bloody head off.” Police and paramedics were called with witnesses saying Mr Chokolich kept saying: “I killed her, I fucking killed her.” He was taken to hospital where he then reportedly told medical staff what he had done that he had killed his mother but that he didn’t know why. He also said: “She was killing half the place; that’s why I did it.” In 2018, it was determined because of his serious mental illness, the now 69-year-old, who has treatment-resistance schizophrenia, was not fit to stand trial and a custody order was made detaining him for life but that he could be released by the Governor. However, the act allowing the order was repealed and replaced with the new Criminal Law (Mental Impairment) Act 2023 which removed the Govenor’s discretion prompting a new order to be made. In determining to keep Mr Chokolich locked up indefinitely, WA Supreme Court Chief Justice Peter Quinlan said in his assessment, there could be no doubt that if Mr Chokolich had pleaded guilty to the charge of murder and the court sentencing him did not take into account his mental impairment, it would have jailed him for life. He said if you ignore his serious mental health issues, his actions on that day were “objectively horrifying, and involved violence of the most extreme kind”. “Indeed, it would be virtually unthinkable that a person would do what he did on that day in the absence of some form of mental impairment,” Chief Justice Quinlan said. “In my view, the best estimate of the term of imprisonment that the court would have imposed in those circumstances is a term of life imprisonment. I will therefore set the limiting term for Mr Chokolich’s custody order as the duration of Mr Chokolich’s life.”