Two days before she was gunned down by police, Sylvia Klibingaitis said goodbye to her only child who flew off to Chile to pursue a romance.

Klibingaitis’ mental state was fragile at times, but recent life troubles coupled with knowing 18-year-old Lorelei would be thousands of kilometres away only heightened her anxiety, her family says.

Before her daughter’s plane took off, Klibingaitis sent her a text message, “I just want you to know that you are loved so much.”

That text message would be the last.

On Saturday morning, family members got in touch with Lorelei on Skype to share the news: her mother had been shot and killed by police the day before.

Little is known about how Klibingaitis, 52, ended up in a “confrontation” with police outside her North York home. Police say she approached an officer with a knife.

One neighbour said they heard two or three gunshots and then saw the woman crumpled in the middle of the street. A stray bullet hit Klibingaitis’ garage door and she was shot once in the chest.

She was pronounced dead on arrival at Sunnybrook hospital.

Toronto Police refused comment on the case Saturday night.

As the Special Investigations Unit continues to probe the “details and circumstances” surrounding Klibingaitis’ death, the Friday morning incident has left her family angry and grief-stricken.

“Something just doesn’t add up as to how Sylvie was gunned down,” said Anita Wasowicz, one of Klibingaitis’ three sisters. “This was an inappropriate way to handle her.”

Choking back tears Saturday afternoon, Wasowicz described Klibingaitis — her “kin sister” — as a creative, loving and deeply religious person who focused her life on her daughter.

She also described her sister’s personal struggles — beginning when she was 17 and Wasowicz walked in on her downing a bottle of pills in the bathroom.

“She OD’d,” Wasowicz said, describing how the family rushed her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.

When Lorelei was young, Klibingaitis’ mental health began to spiral out of control. According to Wasowicz, she began to hear voices and exhibited a range of symptoms related to psychosis and schizophrenia. Doctors later diagnosed her with bipolar disorder.

According to Wasowicz, Klibingaitis described the voices as “God and Jesus directly speaking to her” — often telling her she would never see her daughter again and that she would become homeless.

Yet Klibingaitis was determined to succeed, her sister said. In 2004, in her 40s, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree program at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College and spent her days studying and singing with St. Basil’s choir. She graduated in 2009.

Soon after she received her degree, Klibingaitis sunk into another dark phase.

“It was a sense of disorientation,” Wasowicz said of her sister’s heightened anxiety and increased paranoia in the months following graduation.

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In October 2009, Klibingaitis was committed to a mental health facility for one month.

“It was sad to see her suffer. But when she did get help and get stabilized, it was exciting for all of us to have family back,” Wasowicz said of the time after her hospital stay.

Over the next year, Klibingaitis worked part-time at the Harold & Grace Baker Centre, a seniors’ care home in North Toronto. She also became a grandmother with the birth of Lorelei’s baby Caleb.

Howard Goldkind, a criminal lawyer who represented Klibingaitis in 2004 for a case he could not discuss, described her as “a very giving, helpful person, especially to the elderly and to those less fortunate than her.”

“Last time I saw her, she was cheerful, happy, happy to see me,” he said of his meeting with her earlier this fall. “Everything seemed to be going very well.”

As Lorelei’s departure drew nearer, Klibingaitis tried to stay positive and planned on scraping money together to buy a wedding dress if the romance in Chile went as planned.

But Wasowicz said Klibingaitis had “peak anxiety” over the last month — the voices in her head got louder and more frequent and she developed involuntary foot movements that prevented her from working at the seniors’ home.

She also learned she had to leave the house she shared with her mother, whose progressive dementia required full-time care. The stress of change, coupled with her daughter’s decision to move to Chile, resulted in a bubbling anxiety that left family members worried.

The family planned to meet with Klibingaitis’ doctor to discuss their concerns about her heightened stress.

“There was hope that she could get help. She had continuous work, treatment, she was living.” Wasowicz said. “The police, they took my friend away. She’s gone.”

Infuriated by the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death, Wasowicz said she and other family members hope an investigation will shed light on the way police deal with mentally ill people.