December 17,1991-in Cinncinnati,Ohio----My father,Damon W. Caudill was visiting me at my apartment. He and my mother had come by around 9:00 p.m. to drop medicine off to my roommate. I was sleeping and did not get up to visit with them. They left my apartment around 9:15 . I could hear the building entry door close behind my dad and I could hear my mom still in the entrance hallway. Maybe 3-5 minutes later I heard what sounded like 4 firecrackers going out POP-POP-POP-POP! At the same time my mother was screaming 'He has been shot!' I got out of my bed ran outside to find a crowd around the passenger side of my father's car. I ran around to find him bent forward. He was alive when I first got to the car and everyone was saying to bring blankets because he was cold. He never came around and he died within 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived. Noone was ever arrested for his murder. We did have a re-enactment done through channel 12 news in Cincinnati. We got! word from inmates and other sources that my dad was killed for one of two reasons: First story was that my dad found a stash of cocaine in his closet and confronted my mother. He then flushed it down the toilet. For this, the man my mother was holding it for put a hit on my dad thinking my mom would pay him with the life insurance money.Second story is: My dad was killed as a mistaken identity. A couple weeks earlier in my apartment complex a drug deal had gone bad in the next building and someone's brother was killed. Supposedly there was a hit on the man who killed the brother and my dad was mistaken for that person. We got several tidbits of information from witnesses that day. Several people saw a dark skinned(not african-american) man, with dark hair standing behind the dumpster beside my building all afternoon that day. Noone thought anything of it because he bothered noone. Also people saw a small red car leaving the scene around 9:20-9:30. This information is int! eresting because the man my mom was dealing and having an affair with fits this description. He also admits to being at a friend's house one mile away from the scene that night which is unusual because he lives over an hour away. Also more strange things happened. I was staying at my mom's house when about 4 days after the funeral I got a strange call. A man calling himself John, called from a bar for my mom. When I said she was not there he got angry and hung up. He kept calling at least every half hour. He gave three different identities. He said first he was her lawyer, then her friend, then someone she owed money to. The third time he called, he called me by my middle name and said he was just standing outside my bedroom window watching my friend and I. I immediately called the police who did indeed find footprints right outside my window. At that point i decided to leave and hide because I was very scared. My mom sold the house and moved in with man she had her ! affair with. She got messed up in the wrong crowd and got in trouble with drugs. She is currently serving a seven year sentence in Ky. prison. I am convinced someone knows who killed my dad. I am not sure if my mothr knows or was involved. I have a gut feeling that she may know who did it. And for some reason the police did not really look into it very well. Since there was that drug deal a couple weeks earlier, they tried to keep it in the same category and put it aside. But my father was a wonderful man. Never into the drugs. My mom had run off almost a year prior and left him to father my three younger siblings alone. He was only 41 when he died. I was the oldest child being 19. It was a devastating thing we are still trying to deal with and we would like the peace of mind knowing that if his killer is never brought to justice then we would at least like to know we tried. My father would be a grandfather of 4 if he were alive today. He was well liked in our commun! ity. He worked very hard at the Cincinnati Airport for nearly 20 years. I do not know what you can do to help me but if you can do anything at all- it would be greatly appreciated. Each year the pain grows more and I feel helpless. Sincerely, Marie Caudill How it changed my life:I am 26 years old and still trying to get past that night. I still see him lying face forward in his car. I still get so scared at night that I stay awake in case I hear noises. I am greatly saddened because his family blamed me at first because it was my apartment he was visiting so I had lost a lot of support. I tried to put myself through college but I also had guardianship of my siblings when my mom went to jail so I could not afford it. It just does not seem like I have ever been able to get my confidence in life and people since it happened.My siblings were affected even more so. They were younger-16,14,and 12.They are very angry with it and it is hard for us to get along because when one of us want to talk about it, the others want to forget it ever happened. Holidays are very hard -especially Christmas because it happened so close.
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