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Relatives of the man accused of violently attacking a woman inside 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 may hurt someone.
In a statement to NBC News, the family of Russell Phay 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 noted, 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.
“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 receiving worrisome phone calls from Phay. He made little sense, a sibling said in an interview with NBC News, and he provided no details about where he was.
He made no specific threats, but the calls prompted the family to reach out to authorities, said the sibling, who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be publicly associated with Phay.
They said they never heard back from the Department of Corrections and learned of Phay’s arrest only when he called a family member from jail on May 25, four days after the attack at Warner’s home, the family said.
The Colorado Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
“This tragedy might have been preventable, and we are devastated that our efforts to sound the alarm went unanswered,” the family said.
Phay, 42, has a criminal history that spans multiple states and includes guilty pleas to assault, stalking and menacing, court documents and public records show. In Colorado, he was ordered to remain on parole for two years after the completion of a 512-day prison sentence in 2021 for a case that appeared to be one of his most recent in that state, according to the records.
It isn’t clear if Phay was on parole at the time of the alleged attack in Santa Barbara, but the siblings said that representatives from the state Department of Corrections told the family he was.
The family member said relatives weren’t sure where Phay was when they first reached out to authorities. In an effort to track him down, the family first called officials in Texas and Nevada, where the sibling said Phay had prior criminal cases, but were told he was not on probation or parole in those states.
After being told that he was on parole in Colorado, the family focused their attention on trying to alert the person the representatives identified as Phay’s parole officer, said the sibling.
Public records show that one of Phay’s most recent criminal cases in Colorado appears to have been in December 2020, when he was accused of assaulting someone with a baseball bat, a complaint shows. He pleaded guilty to felony menacing in June 2021 and was sentenced the following month to two years in prison, with 218 days suspended, court records show.
Authorities have not said why Phay allegedly broke into Warner’s home in Montecito, the wealthy enclave just outside Santa Barbara, and assaulted Malek-Aslanian. Afterwards, Phay allegedly barricaded himself inside the house and tried to flee by leaping from a second-story bathroom, the sheriff’s office said.
Phay was apprehended and charged with attempted murder, burglary, kidnapping, assault and other crimes. His attorney declined to comment.
Representatives for Warner have not responded to requests for comment, nor have relatives of Malek-Aslanian.
In the statement, Phay’s family said they are “heartbroken by the horrific incident involving our brother, Russell M. Phay, and the innocent woman who was so grievously harmed. Our hearts are with her, her family, and everyone affected by this senseless act of violence. We are deeply saddened by the pain and trauma caused.”
The relatives added they are grieving not only for the victim and her loved ones, “but also for the brother we once knew — and the system that continues to fail so many families like ours.”
