Sadness

A terrible thing happened in my neighborhood this week. It was an awful, heinous, despicable happening and I am very, very sad as I write this.

A woman was murdered this past Monday, murdered in her own car, as she drove someone (we now know who) to a missed location. It may have been a lapse in judgment, or maybe a forced happening, we'll never know for certain. What we do know is that, Kristi Kimes dropped her children off at her ex-husband's home early this past Monday and one can only assume that she was going to go to work afterwards, but something awful happened, and her ex-husband, who she had a restraining order against, somehow got in the car and left with her on the last journey of her breathing life. She was found later, in the driveway of the Taco Bell on West Chestnut Expressway, throat slashed, slumped over the steering wheel. Dead. Witnesses say they saw the car swerve, heard the horn honk and then saw it pull into the Taco Bell parking lot. Was she trying to save herself or trying to make sure someone saw what had happened to her?

Witnesses say that someone got out of the passenger's side of the vehicle and walked away.

Surveillance footage later showed someone hiding in the bushes, someone hiding, watching, as the police were called. A bloody knife was found at the site. As part of the whole investigation, the ex-husband may have ingested anti-freeze prior to the incident and even told his oldest daughter to make out his will on that very morning the girls were dropped off at his house. Bloody clothing was found in his house later on.

The details are hard to take.

The fact is, a woman died in my direct focus, in my neighborhood, in my area, this week, and I am sick about it. She was 47 years old, younger than me, but what does that matter? Two daughters left behind, and now that the ex-husband has been arrested and charged with her murder, two children have now lost both parents.

Our society is simply in a mess. Plain and simple. And this writer doesn't know the answer to any of it. I wish I did and I wish I could have learned it in time that Kristi Kimes could have been spared.