Lauded foster mom Pat McCollum, her disabled son and an 11-year-old lady have been recognized because the victims killed in a stabbing on College Hill Thursday.
Cincinnati police reported receiving quite a few calls a couple of disturbance within the 1000 block of Springbrook Drive. When officers arrived, they discovered Anthony Mathis, 66, retreating into a house.
Chief Theetge mentioned SWAT officers tried to barter with Mathis for a number of hours earlier than coming into the house.
Inside, they discovered Mathis with self-inflicted knife wounds, together with 78-year-old McCollum, DJ McCollum, 32, and Cadence McCollum, 11, useless from obvious knife wounds.
DJ was adopted by McCollum when he was younger. Cadence and McCollum’s relationship is unknown at the moment.
Mathis was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for remedy the place he died from his accidents.
Mathis’ relationship to the victims is unclear at the moment. Police didn’t instantly reply to The Enquirer’s request for remark.
McCollum says he’ll “by no means be separated” from son DJ
McCollum had fostered greater than 70 kids over the course of twenty years and had adopted not less than 4 of them.
McCollum was additionally a longtime member of the New Jerusalem Baptist Church, based on its pastor, the Rev. Damon Lynch Jr.
“She was a fantastic mom and good to the kids,” Lynch mentioned. He remembered that she usually arrived on Sundays with a mess of kids in tow.
McCollum by no means married, based on a 2012 Enquirer report. She had her first baby in highschool, dropped out and accomplished her highschool training at night time and through summer time faculty.
She earned a bachelor’s and grasp’s diploma in social work from the University of Cincinnati. She taught school and educated foster mother and father. She turned a foster mum or dad in 1991 and specialised in caring for youngsters with particular wants.
DJ was McCollum’s fourth adopted baby. He went to her on the age of seven. He turned severely disabled as an toddler when 85 p.c of his physique was burned after an older baby dropped a match into his crib.
She adopted him in 2002 and went on to see him stroll on prosthetic legs and graduate from Woodward High School.
In 2012, she instructed The Enquirer that she anticipated DJ to stay together with her for the remainder of his life.
“Either I die first, or he dies,” he mentioned. “I’ll by no means half with him.”
The investigation into Thursday’s stabbing continues to be ongoing. Police ask anybody with info to name 513-352-3542.
This article initially appeared within the Cincinnati Enquirer: Police identify three victims killed in College Hill stabbing
