“He told me years ago that I was the one honest thing in his life,” Knight recalled Friday, March 12, two days after she said she fatally shot Ratchford following an argument that turned physical Wednesday, March 10, at his home at 25 E. Liberty St.
The .38-caliber handgun Ratchford gave her for protection is the weapon Knight used to kill him. She has not been charged, and she said the incident was self-defense.
On the 9-1-1 tape, Knight told the dispatcher she shot Ratchford in the shoulder, before realizing she’d shot him in the chest.
Ratchford, who was charged with domestic violence in 2005, died at the scene. The couple also filed domestic violence civil protection orders against each other in 1998.
“Everybody knew how much I loved him,” Knight said in a exclusive interview with the News-Sun. “Everyone knew that he loved me.”
Knight said Ratchford had been drinking before he assaulted her, leaving her with a bruised, swollen face and two black eyes.
Ratchford had only been violent with her one other time, she said.
She said a friend of Ratchford’s had witnessed the assault before the fatal shooting but wouldn’t help her when she pleaded.
“If he had come to ... help me, this would not have happened,” Knight said.
Now a community is divided as some people blame her, Knight said. Her daughter, Chasmine, 25, is one of the few on her side.
“I have nothing,” Knight said. “(Chasmine) is the only family I got. She’s the only friend I got.”
Ratchford and Knight didn’t have any children in common, but Chasmine said she’d known him since she was about 6 years old, and he had stepped up as a father figure for her.
“It’s hard,” Chasmine said. “For one, it’s hard to look at her face. And it’s hard because, yeah, he’s gone. But it was self-defense. It’s not her fault.”
“He’s not gone,” Knight said quietly while gesturing toward her heart, patting her chest. “He’s in here.”
‘Truth will come out’
Dupree Ratchford, Timothy Ratchford’s older brother, said he was shocked when he found out about the shooting.
“It’s bewildering,” Dupree Ratchford said. “I’d often stop by the house unannounced, and I never saw any type of display of violence.”
Dupree Ratchford, who lives in Cincinnati, said everything he’d heard about the incident was either hearsay or media accounts.
“My brother was a kind-hearted person who would do anything for anyone,” Dupree Ratchford said.
He’d heard that Knight and Ratchford were not in a relationship, that she was an old flame who had become a tenant, not a “live-in love.”
“When I heard that Christina was the one who shot him, it seemed really strange,” Dupree Ratchford said.
When asked if he thought Knight should be in jail, Dupree Ratchford was silent as he considered it.
When he responded, he asked, “If she had run upstairs, my question is, what prevented her from running out the door? Why did she have to shoot him?”
Dupree Ratchford said he has no animosity toward Knight and is certain that Springfield police will conduct a thorough investigation.
“I trust the authorities will do the right thing,” he said. “And the truth will come out.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0374 or boutten@coxohio.com.
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