in. they overlooked him in the attic. i was downstairs, along with the rest of my family that was there for my grandma s funeral. and he waited for his moment. he shot my mom in the neck through the attic vent. my mom was rushed to the hospital. he missed by just this much. they couldn t operate, take the bullet out because it was so close to her spine. till this day the bullet is still in her neck, three years later. and after he did that, he turned the gun on himself. david ratliff sr. began his spree of violence shortly after his release from the same jail in which his son is now incarcerated. he had served 119 days for threatening and abusing his wife. family members say he had never been violent until about a year earlier when depression, alcohol, and drugs sent him over the edge. he was a great father growing up.
him. he thinks i hate him. ratliff s mother, missy hayes, says he will not respond to his angry letters. personally i think it s manipulation at its finest. i know he feels hurt and lost and abandoned and all of that completely natural. that doesn t give him the right to be mentally or emotionally abusive to me. i think david has misplaced anger. he doesn t know how to handle what his dad did. he has never dealt with it. he put himself there. he s the only one that can pull him out of it. i cannot fix this. missy still lives in the home where her husband, david sr., fired the shots that forever changed her life. well, my mother was killed here. i was shot at the kitchen table. i m not going to let that take away from my home. he took enough. i love my home. i love coming home to my home. i m very proud of my home. this is my happy. this is my safety zone. believe it or not. you ve lost your mother in this horrible way.
he s in the house. he s shooting! he s shooting. i still didn t know that this was a gun that i was hearing. i didn t know that i had been shot. and my father came, grabbed me. we heard another shot. that shot was david killing himself. the tragedy sent missy s son, david ratliff jr. who, at the time was 21, on a downward spiral. 21-year-old man. how did you deal with that? not the right way. i started my drug use took a whole other level. i started shooting heroin, shooting whatever i could. i mean, that was it. i was numbing myself to complete numbness. kept coming to jail. kept getting other chances. what is your relationship with your mom now? after everything everything that happened, it was crappy.
year before everything happened. three years earlier, david ratliff sr. made headlines after a terrifying spree of violence ended in the devastation of his family. it was all a nightmare. story you see in like a michael meyers movie. he was having a mental breakdown and i just i heard it in his voice. and the things he was saying. he felt that everyone was against him. and he shot and killed my grandma. my grandpa said that he also tried to pull the trigger on him as well, but the gun jammed. well, it doesn t stop there. he actually went on the run for a few days and no one knew where he was. people thought he fled to florida. we were in protective custody. we got escorted to my mom s house. we had cops outside. the police escorted us back there and said it was safe to go in.
wasted, worse than i ve ever seen him in my life. that night, he was the devil. i can see evil in his eyes. i mean, i was that night, i was scared. i had never feared him ever before. but that night, i was worried. he held a knife to my throat that night. he was eventually convicted of assault and served 3 1/2 months in this very jail. while he was incarcerated his mother died. they refused to let him go to her service. and i think that was the beginning of his real hate for life and for me. when he was released from jail, missy s husband, david ratliff sr. murdered missy s mother. three days later, while on the run from authorities, he hid in the attic of his family s home and shot missy through a vent. i was setting at the kitchen table and my house lit up like a flash of lightning. i ve never heard a gunshot before. i didn t even know what it was. i heard my brothers screaming,