“Be careful,” Erin Roach told her husband that night. “I love you.”

Stephen Roach's wife Erin, father-in-law Tom Donovan, mother Kathy and father Dennis. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        The person she sent off to work with those words and a kiss came home a changed man. He still sits by her side, but now sleeps fitfully in their bed and picks at his food.

        He is not the same man who left for work on the night of April 6.

        Erin's husband is Stephen Roach.

        He's the Cincinnati police officer charged with negligent homicide and obstruction of official business in the shooting death of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas.

        The teen-ager and the four-year police veteran met in a dark Over-the-Rhine alley in the early-morning hours of April 7. Timothy Thomas was running from police. He had 14 outstanding warrants.

        Mr. Thomas died in that alley.

        Officer Roach shot him.

Erin and Stephen Roach in May 2000. (Photo provided) | ZOOM |

        Details of the shooting that triggered days of riots and more than a month of turmoil across Cincinnati will come out in a court of law.

        For now, both families are dealing with their losses.

        “We feel horrible,” said Erin Roach. “But, I can't begin to imagine how bad Timothy Thomas' family feels.”

        Until this week, Erin has kept her feelings to herself about her life with the man she calls Steve and the night of April 7.

        “I sent one man out to work that night, and I got another completely different one home the next morning,” she said.

        “Steve's always been very strong, taking care of things, dealing with them quickly. Always on the go.

        “He came home sunken. His eyes were like saucers. He had no expression on his face.

        “I ran out to meet him that morning and we held each other. We didn't make it into the house before he started crying uncontrollably.”

        Tears welled up in her green eyes as she spoke. Erin hugged a pillow on a sofa in the living room of her parents' Whitewater Township home.

        On an adjoining sofa sat her in-laws, Kathy and Dennis Roach.

        Steve Roach, stress showing on his gaunt face, waited quietly in the kitchen. Not doing interviews per the advice of his attorney, he sat with his father-in-law, Erin's dad, Tom Donovan.

        The business of the Roach and Donovan families is serving the public. Tom Donovan is in his 36th year of fighting fires for the city of Cincinnati. Come September, Dennis Roach will have served on the Oxford, Ohio, police force for 23 years. In all those years, he has never fired his weapon in the line of duty.

        “Steve always wanted to be a policeman,” said his mother. “It was the only thing he ever talked about doing.”

        Being a policeman, wearing a badge has been his dream since junior high school.

        “He wanted to help the community, to protect and serve,” said Dennis Roach.

        “Steve chose this profession,” said his wife of eight months, “because it's in his heart.

        “It's what he lives for and loves. You don't get Steve without getting the police officer.

        “It's his calling.”

        Support from what Erin called “the police and fire department families,” relatives, friends and neighbors and complete strangers “are helping us survive.”

        She showed a box of cards bearing words of encouragement. “They're from people in Cincinnati and the suburbs as well as from Florida and Chicago. We even got a card from someone in the Netherlands.”

        There are no notes in the box from any officials at City Hall.

        No member of City Council has written the Roaches.

        No one has called.

        “Councilman Jim Tarbell sent us a bouquet of flowers,” Erin noted.

        She doesn't expect city leaders to speak with them about the pending cases involving her husband.

        “But it would be nice to hear from them. They could just check on us to see if we're doing all right.

        “After all, we are two city employees.”

        Erin Roach works as a Cincinnati police dispatcher. She was supposed to work the night of April 6 and into the early morning of April 7.

        She would have heard the radio calls about the shooting. “I don't dispatch in his district. But I listen on another radio. I've heard him when he's chasing someone. I've heard him when he's been assaulted.”

        In the early-morning hours of April 7, she would have heard her husband's badge number go over the radio. She would have learned immediately about the shooting, then wondered if he was alive or dead.

        But she was off sick that night.

        So, she never heard the police calls surrounding that fatal and fateful moment.

Daily routine

        Time stands still night and day for Steve and Erin Roach.

        They left their home hours after the shooting. A death threat sent them packing. They have yet to return.

        “We live out of suitcases,” Erin said. “We're hiding out. We're out of the county.

        “Steve has gone from being a good guy, a policeman doing his job, to a man on the run.”

        They come into the city only for doctors' appointments.

        They spend little time outdoors.

        “I'm afraid to go outside,” Erin said. “I do things that keep me inside, cross-stitching, scrap-booking, cake baking.

        “We just lay around. We tried to watch a movie. Rented one and couldn't watch it.”

        Days go by. They forget to eat.

        “We don't care. We have no appetite,” she said.

        They went jogging once. That lasted one lap.

        Steve looked at Erin. She looked at him.

        “That was fun,” she told him. “Now what do we do?”

        They went to their home away from home. And locked the door behind them.

        Sleep comes in fits.

        “Steve has nightmares from that night every time we go sleep,” she said. “He jumps in his sleep. Talks. Whimpers. A peaceful sleep is not there.”

        Erin watches over him at night. Guards him.

        He sleeps. She stays awake. Never leaves his side.

        Only when he wakes up, always early in the morning, does she fall to sleep.

        “It's not safe,” she said, “for both of us to be asleep at the same time.”

The indictments

        When the two indictments came down this week, the family took the news hard.

        “I prayed to God they wouldn't happen,” Erin said. “In my heart, I know Steve didn't do anything wrong. Wouldn't do anything wrong.”

        But, she added, she's a cynic.

        “I know politicians are involved. And they have to save their own hides.”

        Still, when they watched live coverage of the reading of the indictments on TV, Erin and Steve started sobbing.

        “Steve's legs started twitching involuntarily,” Erin said.

        “I held his hand and felt his entire body moving.

        “I asked God, now what are we going to face?”

        Steve Roach faces losing his life's dream. If convicted, he faces jail time, the loss of his freedom. And the loss of the badge he always wanted to wear.

        Whatever happens, Dennis Roach insisted his son would abide by the ruling.

        “You can guarantee that he will stand up and accept it.

        “You won't have go and find my son.

        “You won't have to issue warrants for his arrest.

        “You won't have to chase him down a dark alley.”

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