CARATUNK (AP) – The parents of a 24-year-old man who’s charged in last week’s slaying of his mother agonized over their son’s mental illness, and encountered frustration when they tried to help him.

Robert Bruce, husband of 47-year-old Amy Bruce, who he found bludgeoned to death in his home last Tuesday, said their son William resisted treatment for his mental illness. Finally, the kind of tragedy they feared might happen played out. William Bruce is in jail facing a murder charge.

“The night before it happened, my wife and I were in bed, talking,” Robert Bruce told the Maine Sunday Telegram. “I said Amy, I can’t believe they allow these people out on the streets. Willie should be in a padded cell, heavily sedated. What do we have to wait for? Do we have to wait for him to hurt somebody or kill somebody before they do something?’ “

He and his wife spent years trying to help their son deal with his mental illness and even let him live at home, despite their fears. But they met nothing but frustration, first by the hope that William would get better, and later by his refusal to accept treatment.

The Legislature passed a law a year ago that might have helped, but it has not yet taken effect. The law allows a hospital to require someone discharged from an institution to accept treatment or be forced to return to the hospital.

But disability-rights advocates and some mentally ill people and their families argue against forcing people into treatment, saying it is ineffective and violates basic liberties.

Barred from having a say in many of their son’s treatment decisions, Robert and Amy Bruce had to either turn their backs on him or accommodate his illness and accept the risks.

There was no requirement that William Bruce take medication for his illness after he was discharged recently from the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta. He had been diagnosed at different times with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Robert Bruce said he cherishes many of the memories of his son’s childhood. William’s life briefly “sparkled” when he went into the Army, his father said, but that ended when William went absent without leave.

His son’s moods would change, Bruce said, “like somebody snapping their fingers.”

“It was as if something had entered his body. … Their eyes get dark, and they don’t look human. They are deeply in psychosis, and they are in another world, and you can never know what’s in their mind.”