Family of suspect in Beanie Babies mansion attack said they tried to warn authorities days before

Relatives of the man accused of violently attacking a woman in the California mansion of Beanie Babies billionaire Ty Warner said Wednesday that in the days before the assault, they repeatedly tried to warn authorities that he might hurt someone.

Relatives of the man accused of violently attacking a woman in the California mansion of Beanie Babies billionaire Ty Warner said Wednesday that in the days before the assault, they repeatedly tried to warn authorities that he might hurt someone.

In a statement to NBC News, Russell Phay’s family said that beginning on May 19 — two days before the alleged assault that left Linda Malek-Aslanian in a coma — his siblings repeatedly called the state agency in Colorado that oversees parolees and tried to sound the alarm. “We left multiple messages over the course of the week expressing our fear that Russell was spiraling and could harm someone,” the family said in the statement, referring to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

For many years, they said, Phay has experienced severe schizophrenia, a condition that they said transformed him from a kind, loving child into a person who is unstable, at times violent and no longer recognizable.

Ty Warner’s home in Montecito, Calif., on Tuesday.NBC News“Many of us have had to distance ourselves from Russell for our own safety, though it has never been easy to do so,” the family said. “Even with our estrangement, we tried to take action when we saw warning signs that he was in crisis.”

Weeks before the California attack, the family began getting worrisome phone calls from Phay. He made little sense, a sibling said in an interview, and he provided no details about where he was.