BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON -- A teen-ager sentenced to 20 years for stabbing a Covington woman while in her yard in 1995 will be released soon.
Nicholas Race was sentenced in December 1995 for the attempted murder of Mildred Barth, 74.
He was 14 when he and another boy jumped her fence, she recalled, saying he wanted to retrieve a ball that had been thrown in the yard. She recognized him because he lived two doors away, but she did not know his name.
He backed her up against a wall, she said, and told her he was going to kill her. He stabbed her first in the side, she said, then cut her throat and put the knife through her right arm.
Mrs. Barth's daughter, Ruthann Sands, said Monday that her mother now has limited use of the arm that was stabbed. She also said she worries about her mother's ongoing emotional distress.
"I wonder how his life was changed during his three years in a juvenile facility," Ms. Sands wrote. "Has he truly been rehabilitated? Was his life as utterly disrupted and destroyed, as ours was?"
On Monday, Kenton Circuit Judge Douglas Stephens decided Nick has turned his life around enough to warrant his release from a juvenile facility after his 18th birthday next week. The judge could have ordered him to serve the rest of his sentence in an adult prison, but he put him on probation instead.
Mrs. Barth had lived in the house 51 years at the time of the attack, but is now afraid to go back there, The house sits empty and she lives with her daughter in Villa Hills.
"I will hang on to my home, but will never be able to live there," Mrs. Barth said in a statement Monday. "All my 51 years have gone to bad memories."
Outside the courtroom, she called Nick a good-looking kid.
"I hope he does better," she said. "But you never know."
Nick has finished high school since he was arrested and is to go to Kentucky State University in January. He apologized again Monday.
Covington senior citizens rallied behind Mrs. Barth after the stabbing, delivering a petition with the signatures of almost 50 seniors asking that the teen be tried as an adult.
