She was decapitated by her mentally ill son. Now her family is suing a UNC doctor who treated him.
In 2017, sheriff’s deputies rushed to a Franklin County home to discover a gruesome sight: a teenage boy walking out holding a butcher knife and his mother’s head.
Last fall, a Superior Court judge declared him not guilty by reason of insanity, committing him to state psychiatric care. At the time, Oliver Funez Machada apologized to the court and hoped out loud that God would forgive him.
Now a lawsuit is targeting the doctor who released Machada from mental health care in Raleigh six days before the killing, despite “alarming signs” and a report from the teen that he did not feel safe outside the hospital.
The suit, filed Feb. 28 in Durham County, alleges negligence and reckless disregard from Dr. Brian V. Robbins, a psychiatrist and medical director at UNC WakeBrook. Brought by the estate of Yesenia Funez, the teen’s mother, it seeks unspecified damages covering funeral expenses and lost income, guidance and companionship.
“As a direct and proximate result of Dr. Robbins’ negligence and recklessness,” said the suit filed by Raleigh firm Knott & Boyle, “Yesenia experienced severe physical and emotional pain and suffering and died in an excruciatingly painful manner at the hands of her own son.”
Robbins did not respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday.
“We cannot comment on specific patients or pending litigation,” said UNC Health Care spokesman Alan Wolf. “However, we are confident in the excellent care provided to all patients at our WakeBrook campus.”
Machada was the oldest of Yesenia Funez’ four children, and the two migrated from Honduras in 2000, the lawsuit said. Funez took her son to the UNC emergency room in 2016, when he was 18, because he had not slept in three days.
A variety of doctors noted unusual behavior, such as smiling at inappropriate times, and that he had deteriorated mentally over several months, disregarding hygiene and performing poorly at school.
While in the emergency department, the suit said, Machada reported hearing a “big voice” and other auditory hallucinations, and his mother told physicians he had once been hospitalized for 14 months for a psychotic episode.
A doctor prescribed anti-psychotic medicine, and Machada was admitted to UNC’s behavioral health emergency department. There, the suit said, he reportedly laughed during interviews, exposed himself to other patients, struck one of them in the head and heard voices telling him to hurt people.
As he deteriorated, the suit said, his parents brought him to the WakeBrook mental health facility in Raleigh, where one doctor recorded him as “clearly psychotic” and he declined to take medication.
In January 2017, Robbins wrote Machada “has engaged in bizarre behaviors, like avoiding showers but then eventually taking one in the dark. Playing with a belt by dragging it on the floor, staring at his fingers over his head, pacing back and forth, laughing to himself.”
Robbins added that “continued hospitalization is warranted,” the suit said.
This behavior continued, the suit said, as Robbins noted Machada striking another patient, trying to push a smaller patient’s head into his crotch and not taking medication. On Feb. 23, 2017, Machada told Robbins he did not feel safe going home given his condition, the suit said.
No one spoke to the teen’s parents about the risk or possibility of his release, the suit said. On Feb. 28, 2017, the same day Machada was seen laughing to himself and “responding to internal stimuli,” Robbins discharged him, the suit said.
Robbins gave the teen 14 days of pills to be taken orally along with a prescription for a month more despite his history of noncompliance, the suit said, adding the doctor could have given an injection to provide two to four weeks of therapeutic benefit.
On March 4, 2017, Machada killed his mother.
“Oliver later stated that when he repeatedly stabbed his mother and decapitated her in front of her two youngest children, he was acting at the direction of voices he heard in his head,” the suit said, “which were telling him that God was commanding him to kill and that he would become an angel for doing so.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2019 at 1:17 PM.