Last Thursday on May 17, an evil hung over Cleveland like a cloud of black smoke. Below, along the 3000 block of East 125th Street, red and blue lights of the Cleveland Police raged against the dark like fire. With shoes lying in the streets abandoned like too many old and foreclosed homes, for too long, sashed in yellow tape like one huge condemned building, Cleveland has been a bowing wall, a tottering fence.
Before 9 p.m. as it often is before disaster strikes, the world and Kimberly Black were strangers. Before 9 p.m., Kimberly was the 29-year-old mother of four thriving children: all under the age of ten. Her neighborhood was not unlike many neighborhoods in Cleveland. Hit hard by the economic crisis. On life support. Spotted with a few well-kept houses, surrounded by others in incurable stages of ruin and decay.
Mere ticks after nine, at 9:10 p.m. Kimberly’s whole—already fragile—world changed. Literally came crashing down around her.
A neighbor across the street said he saw two women sitting in a car with the motor running. He didn’t think anything of it at first. Then, all of a sudden, he saw Kimberly Black attack Sharice Swain with what he believed to be a knife. Then he saw Kimberly leave the car and return with “an even bigger knife.”
Cleveland Police reported that Kimberly Black, 29, and Sharice Swain, 29, both of Cleveland, were arguing violently in a vehicle parked in Black’s driveway when Black, in the heat of the moment, went into the home and grabbed a weapon. Black returned to the vehicle and stabbed Swain multiple times causing Swain to press the gas pedal sending the vehicle forward into Black’s home.
Pump your brakes. Conflicting reports say that the home was not Black’s home. It was the neighbor’s home across the street. Confusing, isn’t it?
What is certain is that, in a strange series of events, after Black’s deadly assault on Swain, she shed her clothes and was outside buck-naked with two of her children. Whether Black was naked at the time of the final assault and whether the car accelerated during the assault seems unlikely, nonsensical. What is certain is that the gravely injured Swain, having no real comeblack, absolutely did indeed press her foot to the gas pedal, striking one house and Black’s two children.
After the crash, Black then fled naked on foot to East 123rd Street and Soika Avenue where she was apprehended.
Swain was transported to MetroHealth Medical Center where she died from multiple slash wounds to her throat. Black’s 2-year-old daughter, Kimshia (pronounced Kim-shy-yah) Ruffin—who was “bleeding from everywhere, her eyes and ears,” one hysterical source stated—was pronounced dead on the scene. Black’s 1-year-old daughter, Taraji Ruffin, was transported to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Children Family Services (CFS), who is providing crisis counseling to the children and are making sure a plan is in place for them while their mother is behind bars, reported that two uninjured children inside the Black home are now in the custody of their aunt. The hospitalized 1 year old was released Friday evening and is now black with her other siblings. CFS says though Black’s kids have never been in their custody prior to Thursday’s incident, there is, however, an open dependency complaint.
Police Sgt. Sammy Morris confirmed that, after Black was treated for a hand injury at Metro, she was placed under arrest and held in the Central Prison Unit to await charges. The Cleveland Division of Police Homicide and Accident Investigation units are continuing to investigate. And the official causes of death will be determined by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office.
What the local news has failed or shunned reporting is one account of an eyewitness who stated that the naked and distraught woman gathered her bleeding children in her arms, eyes burning red with tears and screaming, “Just save my babies! Just save my babies!”
Nikki Randall, who lives in the area and who picked Kimshia up after her mother (perhaps overwhelmed) dropped her, believes the tot died in her arms:
“I think she did ‘cause I saw her eye move, that’s what made me pick her up like she’s still breathing, like she was,” said Randall. “But . . . as soon as he [the paramedic] reached for her, she went limp.”
As you can imagine, this horrific incident has set off a brush fire of rumors and speculation. No one knows whether Sharice Swain struck the children intentionally or accidentally. But according to the Associated Press, neighbors who went to her aid after she was stabbed think Black was the intended target of the revving vehicle.
“It was on purpose,” Randall said, whose daughter goes to school with Black’s 6-year-old daughter. “She was actually trying to hit the mama.”
When the car struck a house, the roof of the porch collapsed but no others were injured.
The women had been “best friends since birth” and Swain considered Black a cousin, according to the victim’s mother Anita Swain. She said she didn’t know what started the argument and declined to comment further.
Indeed, according to other sources, some people actually thought Sharice and Kimberly were cousins. But it may be that the two were more intimate than relatives. Although Kimberly birthed four kids (and therefore must have liked men at some point), some are speculating that this was a lover’s quarrel between a beauty and the butchy beast that killed her.
To make matters worse, both women have a history of substance abuse. And Swain, herself, was once arrested for aggravated assault and placed on probation, according to police records.
Friend, dead. Child, dead. Talk about having one of the worst days of your life. For the rest of your life.
On Monday, May 21, during a brief Cleveland Municipal Court arraignment, charged with murder in the death of Sharice Swain, Kimberly stared at the floor with her hands clasped behind her back. A judge set bond at $1 million.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Brian Murphy told the judge that Black has “myriad psychiatric” problems and receives disability payments. There was no discussion of a motive.
Perhaps Black did not need one. Sources allege that Kimberly Black may have been tripping on Wet—a cigarette or marijuana joint dipped in embalming fluid that is allowed to dry before smoking. Side effects of formaldehyde poisoning include a feeling of the body being extremely hot, usually causing the person to strip naked. A self-professed former dealer said, “What you do when trippin’ on Wet depends on your mood at the time. If you’re dancing, you will happily dance the night away. If you wanna ‘have sex,’ you will ‘have sex’—with whoever you with—male or female,” he added. “For example, girls kissing their friends on dance floors in clubs,” he laughed. “Ask Karrine Stefans what Wet will do.”
Defendants awaiting arraignment on less serious charges stared wide-eyed when the prosecutor said the victim’s neck had been slashed from “ear to ear” by Black. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
And yes, he alleges, a person possessed by the demon spirit of Wet may also steal, kill, and destroy.
Alternatively, the sudden aversion to clothing simply may have been a pitiful attempt to “remove” evidence.
Kimberly Black’s neighborhood is no stranger to this sort of fervent turmoil. Her arrest occurred a half-block away from the now-demolished house where the remains of 11 murdered women were found in 2009. “Cleveland Strangler” Anthony Sowell (in a wasted effort) is appealing his murder conviction and death sentence.
If asked, I would write the Lifetime movie script for this tragic story. Though I wouldn’t want to stay, I believe that it is a story worth visiting. Don’t you want to know what factors in a young woman’s life combine and bubble up to a hellish day like this?
However, people of color are reminded that the Casey Anthony’s of the world (without character, pigment, and no matter how feverishly hated) make “better” characters. Therefore, because Black’s victims are far from blue-eyed and blonde, this horror story may only be remembered as “just another night when some fried psycho was cuttin’ the crazy in Cleveland.”
On Wednesday, May 23, a candlelight vigil was held near Black’s home for the slain woman and toddler—who, but for a very strange series of events, would have turned 3 on Friday.
