She was at home when she received a frantic call from her grandson. In garbled, confused speech she quickly realised something was seriously wrong.
She urged him to get help but it wasn’t until a few days later when an officer knocked on her door and confirmed the sad truth: Her daughter was dead and her grandson was charged with her murder.
Stephen Ball, 32, would later plead guilty to the unlawful killing of his mother Susanne Galvin, 55, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and his mental health issues would become a centrepoint for his trial at Bolton Crown court.
Ultimately, jurors found him guilty of her murder. READ MORE: Man guilty of murdering his mum after stamping on her head At trial his grandmother, Mary Galvin, would reveal the devastating reality, and disturbing consequences, of her family’s troubles with mental health. “As far as I was concerned, both Stephen and Susanne were mentally unstable,” she began.