HAMILTON, Ohio -- Cindy Day Wagers said she and her husband, Clifford, noticed her son wasn't acting normally.
He was suffering mentally, she said, and using drugs. He was transient, living with different relatives at different times, Cindy said. They prayed and hoped he'd change, but eventually, Cindy, her husband and her mother, all who lived in a home on Mark Avenue, decided Cindy's son was no longer welcome there.
"We all agreed that we didn't want him to stay here... But it's hard to turn down your kid when you want him to get him some help," she said.
Cindy's son, Jonathon Dwayne Day, asked again and again if he could stay with them. But they stood firm.
Then, Wednesday night, she said, he returned with a knife. And according to Cindy and Hamilton police, he turned on Clifford, stabbing him as he tried to jump a neighbor's fence to get away.
"Stabbed him in his heart and his sides and his stomach," she said. "It's like a monster had got a hold of him. He just ripped him apart for no reason at all."
"He said help me Cindy! I'm bleeding! he cut me."
In that moment, she said, Jonathon wasn't her son. She believes her son blamed her husband for the family turning him away.
Clifford Wagers died Thursday.
Day, 28, is now charged with murder. He was scheduled to have a preliminary hearing in Hamilton Municipal Court at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Cindy has no plans to show up to his court hearing. Drugs, she said, destroyed her family.
"I hope it haunts him like it haunts me," she said.
She's relying on her church family and God as she copes with the loss of her husband and son, and is trying to raise money for Clifford's funeral expenses.
"I don't know what to do without him," she said. "My husband was my life. He was my everything."
Day, 28, of Mark Avenue in Hamilton, is in the Butler County Jail on a $200,000 bond, according to online jail records.
In addition to the murder charge, Day is also charged with felonious assault and a probation violation. The bond according to court records is for the felonious assault charge, but no bond has been set for the murder or probation violation charges.
Day had been sentenced to 2 years community control following a guilty verdict regarding a 2015 assault charge, according to Hamilton Municipal Court records. He was sentenced to six months in jail with four months suspended. He had already served two months in jail.
Day was already to be in court this coming Wednesday related to a March 8 theft arrest. He was arraigned on March 15 and that case was also continued until this coming Wednesday.
The Journal-News also contributed to this report.
