According to the statement, David Pokorny threatened and physically assaulted his mother. He allegedly told police responding to a 911 call that day that he had considered suicide many times.
“He talked at length about conspiracies to control thought, i.e., ‘My mind has been hijacked by the Russians.’ He wanted Gary to get a tape recorder to record him talking about all these things,” the document reads.
David Pokorny was restrained and hospitalized after the incident, according to his parents’ statement.
The following year, his parents filed another request for a restraining order.
“We are deeply worried and anxious about David’s health. He must get help, or his [and our] future is bleak,” they wrote in a detailed description of an incident in which they returned from a trip to Europe and were unable to reach David, who was house-sitting.
David Pokorny eventually called his mother, telling his parents “to go back to Europe and die” and that he was tired of being pushed around for 35 years. He later arrived at his parents’ home and tried to spit on his father, they alleged, telling him to “kneel down in front of me and lick the bottom of my shoe.”
Pokorny’s parents wrote that they later discovered their son had sent them emails containing statements like, “Do not try to call me, visit me, or text me. I have fucking had it with you two,” and “You are a brutal, sick, twisted individual, and I do not like you.”
In the May 2015 statement, his parents wrote that they told a police officer they had previously been granted temporary restraining orders but had not served them because they thought they could work things out and get David into treatment.
“We are asking for a temporary restraining order today and will serve it to make it permanent this time as his condition and his threatening behavior is worsening with time,” they wrote.
That month, a court barred David Pokorny from coming within 100 yards of his parents, their home or his father’s workplace. It expired in 2020.
Gary Pokorny declined to comment on the restraining order in a phone call with KQED, saying that it was “in the past.”
Pokorny said his son previously worked in coding and was once an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. He said he couldn’t recall the last time he had spoken to his son.
