When Kristina Romandine called home on New Years’ Eve to say prayers with her kids, things were looking better for her than they had in a while.
On New Years’ Day, Romandine was shot to death in the West Loop apartment she shared with her father. A West Loop man was charged murdering Romandine Friday, police announced.
Matthews, 42, also faces one count of possessing a weapon as a felon, police said. Smith said lived on another floor in the same building as Romandine’s father, who had invited his daughter to stay with him while found a job in Chicago.
Romandine, 33, came to Chicago from Alabama seeking better work than what she could find at home and an escape from past bouts of drug addiction, her mother said. Her parents had been all in on helping her build a different life.
“She really left everything she knew to go up there to make her change,” Debbie Lee Smith said. “She wanted to just clean everything up.”
Romandine’s goal was to return home to Alabama and her four children.
She arrived in Chicago in October, Smith said, and called her kids every night to say Our Father with them. She’d send pictures of buses and “L” trains and complain about the cold. She had just been hired as a bakery manager and was excited to build a more durable career than what she’d been able to find in Alabama, Smith said.
“She wanted a management-type position to show that she could run these things,” Smith said.
Smith believes Romandine met Matthews about a month after she got to the city. The suspect, Smith said, is also from Alabama. They were romantically involved but not officially in a relationship, she said.
Smith said she’d spoken to Matthews on the phone and that he’d encouraged Romandine to keep her mind on work and to avoid alcohol and drugs.
Before Wednesday, she had no concerns for her daughter’s safety.
A few weeks before she was killed, Romandine returned to Alabama for a weeklong visit. They’d celebrated her oldest son’s birthday and had an early Christmas. She did her kids’ hair and painted her daughter’s nails.
Though Smith has lived in Alabama for 20 years now, the family has deep Chicago ties. They’re divided in their baseball loyalties: Smith supports the Cubs while Romandine and her kids were White Sox fans. Sometimes, to get on Smith’s nerves, Romandine would turn the family’s double-sided baseball cups around so the Sox logo faced forward.
Smith has chickens, and Romandine loved when baby chicks were born. She was a big personality.
“She had the most loud, annoying laugh,” Smith said. “I wish I could hear it one more time.”
Just before Romandine returned to Chicago, Smith told her how proud she was of her and encouraged her to keep going on the new path she was charting for herself.
“I said, ‘this is this is your time,’” she said. “I said, you take this moment by the horns right now.’”
Matthews was set to make his first court appearance Saturday, police said.