What illness does Isabella Guzman have? We discuss her mental health that was reported in court and whether it impacted the trial.
Isabella Guzman rose to prominence in 2013, but unfortunately, it wasn’t for a good reason. She’s known for killing her mother, Yun Mi Hoy, by stabbing her over 70 times. It’s an event that shocked the local and national press, who had to come to terms with what happened.
Guzman managed to avoid being convicted of first-degree murder, however, because she successfully used the insanity plea to avoid a life sentence in prison. But this doesn’t mean she got away with causing the death of her mother. She was instead sent to a mental hospital to get treatment for her condition.
Whatever happened to Isabella Guzman?
Isabella Guzman is an American who lives in the US state of Colorado. On August 28, 2013, Guzman, who was 18 years old at the time, stabbed her mother, Yun Mi Hoy, 79 times on the upstairs floor of their home. Yun Mi Ho was killed during the incident, and her face, neck, and torso, in particular, sustained heavy stabbing.
Reportedly, Isabella had an extremely bad relationship with her mum. When Isabella grew up, she and her mother were poor, and so the family couldn’t afford many of the items that Isabella wanted.
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Isabella didn’t take this well, and it led to several arguments in the house. This relationship only deteriorated in the years that followed as Isabella’s parents divorced and Yun Mi Hoy remarried. Things got even worse as Guzman issued death threats to both her mother and stepfather, which got reported to the police.
On August 28, 2013, Guzman would go through with one of these threats and kill her mother.
What illness does Isabella Guzman have?
After Guzman killed her mother, doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia. She told investigators that her actions had been controlled by voices inside of her head. This revelation factored into her plea of insanity, which is something that the court recognized.
On the day that Guzman stabbed her mother, she argued that she thought she was stabbing a woman called Cecilia. She claimed that she would never intentionally harm her mother like that.
Did the courts recognize Isabella Guzman’s plea of insanity?
When Guzman was in court, because she was 18 years old when she killed her mum, she was tried as an adult and charged with first-degree murder. But she pleaded that she was insane because she heard voices in her head and thought the woman she was harming was called Cecilia.
The courts were convinced by Guzman’s plea of insanity, which meant that they found her not guilty by reason of insanity. It doesn’t mean that Guzman was let off the hook, however, because she was transferred into a mental facility until the court determined she was no longer a danger to society.
She was sent to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, where she remains today. Guzman gave an interview with CBS in 2020 where she claimed that her sanity had been restored and had been destroyed previously due to years of what she described as abuse from her family.
She said: “I was not myself when I did that, and I have since been restored to full health.”
“I was abused at home by my family for many years. My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I left the religion when I was 14, and the abuse at home worsened after I quit,” she added.
“If I could change it or if I could take it back, I would.”
