There’s no dispute that David Noel McGee Jr. beat his mother to death with a claw hammer in their Escondido apartment last year. The question is: Why?

On Thursday, his defense attorney told a North County jury that her client — who she said has no history of violence — had overdosed on generic antihistamines, taking at least 80 allergy pills. The attack, she said, happened in “a fog of Benadryl.”

“The truth is on Feb. 1, 2017, David did kill his mom. But there is a difference between killing and murder,” Deputy Public Defender Lindsay Itzhaki said during opening statements in McGee’s trial.

McGee, 26, has pleaded not guilty to murder and using a hammer to kill his mother Rebecca “Becky” Apodaca — an attack so brutal, the prosecutor will not show autopsy photos to the jury in the Vista courtroom of Superior Court Judge Blaine Bowman.

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