A killer took their loved ones, but he couldn't destroy their family ottnews ottawa
Raphael and Catherine Ready at their home on Anoka Street in Ottawa's Alta Vista neighbourhood. In late June, a former neighbour killed Anne-Marie and Jasmine Ready and seriously injured Catherine while Raphael was working in Barbados.
Though there had been warning signs over the years, no one on Anoka Street — including the killer's own father — predicted a tragedy of this scale, which began in the living room of the Ready family's two-storey home and spilled out onto the street, and ended with police shooting both Ready and her attacker.
But as Catherine and her father Raphael recall the sequence of events that night, and make connections to previous troubling encounters with Graves — including how he once forced a kiss on Jasmine — something else is snapping into focus. It's why Catherine and Raphael want to speak out. As survivors, the father and daughter want to regain control of the narrative of what happened to their family.
From the top of these stairs, Catherine and Jasmine could see Joshua Graves at the front door of their family home. He told their mother he needed help. Hearing screams from the living room, Jasmine rushed downstairs. Momentarily distracted, Graves lunged in her direction. "I was on my hands and knees in the middle of the road, covered in my own blood," she recalled. "I was screaming at the neighbours to try to help, and no one did anything."Meanwhile, according to what investigators told Raphael, Anne-Marie mustered what little strength she had left to save her younger daughter. They, too, tried to escape the house, but never made it past the garage.
In addition to multiple stab wounds, Catherine was also struck by a bullet fired by police as they tried to stop the attack.The next few days at the hospital were dark ones for Catherine, who recalled lying in her bed at the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital, crying and wishing she could talk to her mother one more time.
"On the days that I felt like I couldn't do it, I was overwhelmed, she would be there to sit with me and tell me that I could do anything that I wanted to do," Catherine reminisced about her mother. "I'll never have that again," Catherine said. "I lost my whole universe. I've never felt so alone in my life."
Due to circumstances beyond his control, it took four days for Raphael to reach Ottawa. 'It was devastating,' he said. 'I felt helpless.' Over those four days, Raphael said he barely ate and only managed to get about four hours of sleep. But he felt a huge sense of relief when doctors told him Catherine was going to be OK."I felt like finally I can put some of this weight down," she said. "I don't have to carry the world on my shoulders anymore, and I'm able to share the bad days with someone."
He soon befriended Catherine's younger sister, joining Jasmine for walks and long chats on the front porch. "I've never seen her get angry," he said. "She didn't like to cause problems. She didn't like to get people in trouble."Like many girls her age, Jasmine didn't always tell her parents about what was troubling her. But in April 2020, Graves threatened to kill himself in a text message to Jasmine.
Raphael said he never saw his younger daughter get angry. 'She didn't like to cause problems. She didn't like to get people in trouble.' He learned from investigators that Graves, who was supposed to be under the supervision of his mother that night, had left his phone at home and took his mother's car without her knowledge."He had a hammer and he had a stash of other knives in a bag in his car," Ready said.
"This was a person who did not know what no means," Raphael said of the man who killed his wife and daughter. "And the reality is, unless we really educate everyone and the next generation, this is going to continue happening."
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