COLUMBUS, Ohio — 45-year-old Aisha Fraser was a beloved Shaker Heights teacher, doting mother, and respected community member.

Her ex-husband was a former Cuyahoga Common Pleas judge, as well as former state lawmaker.

On November 17, 2018, he stabbed Aisha multiple times in front of their children. 

“I was asked once at the beginning of this work if I thought that because Aisha's murderer was a former judge and state legislator with influencial friends, if Aisha's Law would pass. My answer then resounds with me today. His former titles remain irrelevant.  He was just a guy, a person who tortured his children by brutalizing their mother in front of them, and who ultimately murdered her and left then without a mother and without a father,” said Rep. Janine Boyd. 

Representative Janine Boyd (D-Cleveland Heights) has been on an 18-month crusade to stop Aisha's tragedy from happening to another Ohioan. 

With the help of Rep. Sara Curruthers (R-Hamilton), they wrote Aisha’s Law — that protects domestic violence victims.

For Curruthers, the matter is a personal one. 

“My own mother was abused by her second husband," said Curruthers. "After their brief marriage ended, he stalked her. And then on her way home from work, pulled up next to her car, and beat her with a tire iron, threw her in the car, and raped her. She escaped, but her lawyer told her to move to the top floor of the YWCA for her own safety, and for that of her parents. Can you imagine not being able to live in your family home because someone could harm them and you?"  

The bill passed unanimously Wednesday.

It expands the offense of aggravated murder to include domestic violence and puts in place a lethality screening, in which law enforcement gauge whether strangulation has occurred— a crime that Boyd says is a top predictor of homicide. 

“Not every person who has perpetrated strangulation has gone on to be a mass shooter.However, every mass shooter from Vegas to Dayton had a history of domestic violence and strangulation,” Boyd said. 

The bill now heads to the Senate.