Blair said medication caused her "significant memory issues" and the cuts she alleged came from a dog food bowl Officer Matthew Blair threw in August "were just accidental and in no way done on purpose to hurt me."
“She had told me that the facts were not correct, and she wanted to come in and make another statement,” Tipp City Prosecutor Chris Herman said. “As a result we decided to dismiss the domestic violence charge.”
Blair’s new statement said her husband “has been dealing with stress from my compulsive spending, the issues going on with law enforcement officers all over the country being murdered, working a department where the officers don’t get much support from their leadership, our marriage falling apart, my medical issues (4 major surgeries in 2 years) and no counseling for any of it.”
Tipp City Detective Sgt. Chris Graham said he originally believed the incident to be a “textbook domestic violence case.” But he said Blair “has made it clear the version that she gave that night was not accurate.”
“I don’t want to speculate too far down the road in terms of why she did this, but I think in her mind she leaves here saying, ‘I’m being truthful now,’ ” Graham said. “I don’t think she wanted her husband prosecuted for something she’s convinced didn’t occur the way she told us that it occurred.”
Graham wrote in his report, “Mrs. Blair told me that she purposefully misled investigators so that her husband could ‘feel the same pain she has felt throughout the years,’” noting Blair believed “her husband was distant and unavailable to her and the children during most of their marriage.”
The detective could not say how Blair was injured that night. Records from Matthew Blair’s arrest indicate his wife sustained cuts to her bicep, finger and foot, though she disputed the injury to her foot in her subsequent account.
The Dayton Daily News reviewed body camera footage from Blair’s August interview with Tipp City police after she reported her husband “launched” dog food bowls at her and the family’s dogs. The footage shows Blair crying and bleeding when the Tipp City officer entered the family’s kitchen.
“He (expletive) lost his damn mind,” she said. “He’s, literally, he’s got a temper that’s crazy.”
Officer Blair was arrested on a domestic violence charge in 1995 with a different female while employed as a Madison Twp. officer, according to written statements made in a 2001 pre-employment background check for Huber Heights.
He accepted a deal and pleaded no contest to the charge of attempted domestic violence in Kettering Municipal Court, according to his statement, which said the case was expunged by a judge in 1997.
On video, Kimberly Blair said her husband “swears to God he never hit his ex.”
“I did believe him when we first got together, but more and more I see his temper I don’t believe it,” she said.
After officers determined her husband would be arrested, officers stated Kimberly Blair “was upset that he was going to jail,” noting she “expressed concern about him losing his career.”
Officer Blair, who was put on paid leave during his criminal proceedings, is under internal investigation in Huber Heights.
Body camera footage shows Officer Blair told Tipp City police he “grew up with” Huber Heights police as his father was in the department from 1977 to 2001. Blair also discusses the impact a shortage of police officers in the department was having on him.
“Literally, we’ve got overtime up our (expletive),” he said. “Literally, the last three or four months, we work six days on, three days off, and my six days I’m working overtime at least three-to-four of those days.”
In August, the newspaper reported Huber Heights Police Chief Mark Lightner considers the department “solely reactive” given the officer shortage.
“For years we’ve had guys in the police department asking, ‘when are we going to get all our staffing back?’” he said at the time.
Lightner, who is out of the office, did not immediately reply to a message on his cell phone regarding Blair’s case Friday afternoon.
WHIO-TV reporter John Bedell contributed reporting.