One phone call. That’s all it took to change Heather Rasmus’ life forever. She remembered her nephew’s exact words to her that day — the day her older sister and hero, Wendy Sabatini, died at the hands of her boyfriend in an incident of domestic violence.

“He called me screaming in my ear saying, ‘He killed her,'” Rasmus said.

It was Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016.

The day before, Sabatini had called Rasmus and wished her a happy birthday. It was the last time the sisters would speak to each other.

According to police, Sabatini was shot and killed by her boyfriend, Jason Eaton, in a bedroom of their residence in Greensburg, Indiana, after she rejected his marriage proposal. Afterward, according to court records, Eaton walked into the Greensburg Police Department and confessed to the crime.

Eaton was arrested on a preliminary felony charge of murder in Sabatini’s death and is set to stand trial next month in Decatur County.

Along with other relatives, Sabatini is survived by her two adult children and a young granddaughter.

It’s been a year now since her death, and the family is still struggling with grief. Rasmus visits her sister’s grave every day just to feel close to her and said she thinks about her sister all the time.

“Facebook memories are hard too,” she told the Logansport, Indiana Pharos-Tribune. “It’s just minute by minute.”

Rasmus goes to grief counseling once a month with a group based out in Peru, Indiana. While it helps, she said, Rasmus still greatly misses her sister.

Growing up five years younger than her sister, Rasmus said the two were inseparable as children.

“I always wanted to be where she was,” Rasmus said. “She was my best friend.”

But Sabatini was also very strong-willed and liked to be independent, Rasmus noted.

After her divorce from her first husband, Sabatini met Eaton, and Rasmus said the two seemed happy together.

“(Jason) had his childish sides and liked to drink,” Rasmus said, “but to argue against her, I didn’t see any of that.”

In fact, just a few days before Sabatini’s death, Rasmus was in Greensburg with the family celebrating her niece and nephew’s birthdays. Sabatini and Eaton appeared happy that day, Rasmus said.

“That’s the day Jason showed us the ring on the phone and said he just bought it,” Rasmus said. “He said he was going to ask her to marry him. And then on the 25th, he kills her. So within four days, I got to see my sister, talk to my sister, and then she’s dead. And I can’t take any of it back.”

Sabatini isn’t alone.

A report released last July from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 10,000 homicides in 2013 and 2014. They concluded that over half of those female homicide victims were killed by their intimate partners.

According to statistics from the National Domestic Violence Hotline, around 20 people every minute are physically abused by an intimate partner somewhere in the United States. And domestic violence doesn’t discriminate, affecting all genders, ethnicities, ages and religions.

The United States Department of Justice defines domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior that is used by one intimate partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. It might be physical, sexual, emotional, economical, or psychological.

And experts say the circumstances in many of those cases — like Sabatini’s — appear normal to outsiders.

Chief Deputy Maj. Jill Rife of the Cass County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department, serves as president of a local domestic violence task force. She said many members of the board of directors are domestic violence victims themselves. That firsthand knowledge, Rife said, allows them to be better equipped to help those in similar situations.

Before she got involved with the task force, Rife said she was like most “outsiders” when it came to domestic violence situations.

“I didn’t understand,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t they just leave?’ but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Rife said domestic violence victims are often dependent on their abusers financially, and they feel like they can’t survive on their own.

“They haven’t been allowed to work,” she said. “They might have no job or no income, and they’ve been beat down and told they can’t do anything right. So they don’t know any different a lot of times.”

Rasmus said she wishes she had seen the signs with her sister, but she also said they just weren’t there at the time. And that’s why she urges those in similar situations to ask for help.

“It’s not that people are weak,” she said. “My sister was very strong. Anybody can be trapped in a domestic violence situation, but if they would just reach out and let someone hear their story, then they can see that there are other people out there in the same situation.”

Rasmus continued. “I hear that all the time. What did my sister do to deserve this? My sister didn’t do anything,” she said. “She didn’t ask to be killed. She has no fault in this.

“And that’s the thing that people hear is, ‘What did you do to deserve that?’ Well, you didn’t do anything. That is the accuser’s problem, and you’re not in the wrong. My sister dying showed me that life’s too short, and nobody needs to live like that.”

Dunlap writes for the Logansport, Indiana Pharos-Tribune.